PERUGIA, Italy - The Libyan officer tried to cloak the purpose of his
call to the Italian arms dealer. "A friend," he said, wanted to buy 1
million "pieces" and 50 million items of "food."
But
when that phone call was placed in 2006, Italian police were listening.
They knew the meaning. Libya was shopping for guns — lots of them.
Authorities shadowed the negotiations between Libyan officials and a group
of black-market dealers from across Italy for a year before they moved in
and broke up what would have been a $64 million deal for hundreds of
thousands of Chinese-made assault rifles.
The
case, detailed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, raises
questions about whether Libya, a country eagerly shedding its reputation
as a sponsor of terrorism, is still surreptitiously supporting suspect
groups and regimes. The investigation also underscores the Italian
underworld's role as a go-between for illegal arms deals.
The
court papers say at least part of the shipment was expected to go to other
countries, and experts believe likely destinations were African countries
including war-torn Chad and Sudan, where killings of civilians are
widespread.
Libyan
officials did not respond to questions from the AP about the allegations.
Italian
prosecutors say the deal involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in
kickbacks to senior Libyan officials.
Italy
was a natural place for them to shop.
"Organized crime syndicates ... use Italy for brokering or transshipping
illegal arms transfers to the Balkans, Africa, the United States and
Colombia, in a trade that includes cocaine and human trafficking," said
Sergio Finardi, a military logistics expert at TransArmsEurope, a
nonprofit group based in Italy and the United States that monitors arms
deals.
It was
anti-Mafia prosecutors in the central city of Perugia who discovered the
Libyan transactions, while conducting an unrelated investigation into drug
trafficking by the mob. One of the drug suspects was found to be part of a
group that used offshore companies in Malta and Cyprus to broker arms
deals.
The
phone call they tapped was between Ermete Moretti, owner of the
Malta-based Middle East Engineering Ltd., and a man identified by
prosecutors as a Libyan Defense Ministry official in Tripoli, Col.
Tafferdin Mansur.
"They
want the food too," Mansur told Moretti in the March 2006 conversation,
referring to bullets. "Their request is for 1 million pieces and 50
million food."
A few
days later, Gianluca Squarzolo, the crossover suspect from the drug probe,
went to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to make a deal. Unknown to him,
police at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport inspected his checked baggage
and found a weapons catalog, the first physical evidence of the group's
activities.
Police
used wiretaps and e-mail intercepts to keep tabs on the ensuing
negotiations, which documents show were marked by requests for bribes by
the Libyan officials. When it appeared that an initial agreement was ready
for the sale of 500,000 T-56 submachine guns, a Chinese version of the
AK-47, authorities moved in to break up the deal.
Early
on, the arms traffickers themselves had hinted that Libya would not have
been the final stop for the shipment. The country of 5.5 million has an
army of only 76,000 personnel, according to the London-based International
Institute for Strategic Studies.
"They
are really shopping around if they want a million," Moretti said in a
March 2006 conversation. "It means they want to spread them right and
left."
Investigators shared that view. "The suspects know that the huge order of
AK-47s is destined to fulfill not only the needs of the Libyan army ...
they are aware that part of the order will be forwarded to third parties,"
anti-Mafia prosecutor Dario Razzi in Perugia, a city in central Italy,
wrote in requesting the arrest warrants for the group.
The
Italians made trips to Tripoli and China, arranged for six sample guns to
be sent to the North African country and got as far as organizing a trip
to Libya for the Chinese middlemen to sign the final contract.
On Feb.
12, 2007, police across Italy arrested four of the alleged arms
traffickers: Moretti, Squarzolo, Massimo Bettinotti and Serafino Rossi. A
fifth member, Vittorio Dordi, is believed to be in Congo, where he
apparently is involved in the diamond trade.
In
addition, 13 other Italians were arrested in the drug probe. A lawyer for
the Italians did not return repeated phone calls.
None of
the Libyan and Chinese officials named in the probe was charged, as they
are not suspected of committing crimes in Italy. Authorities led by Razzi
have requested information on the case from several countries.
Court
documents show the Italians had contact with international arms dealers to
supply Russian-made tanks and helicopters, buy a naval cannon and night
visors for Sri Lanka, and procure rubber-coated bullets and tear gas
launchers from a French company.
Many of
the prospective deals appeared to fizzle out quickly. But prosecutors say
the ring came close to success with a separate attempt to sell more than
100,000 AK-47s to Iraq, as well as with the Libyan case.
Since
the 1 million-gun order for Libya was daunting, the Italians decided to
seek an initial 500,000 rifles and 10 million bullets in China, according
to the arrest warrants issued in Perugia.
They
held talks with a trading company called China Jing An Import & Export
Corporation, which in turn was to procure the arms from China's giant,
state-owned North Industries Corp., also known as Norinco. Neither company
responded to requests for comment.
In
2005, the U.S. government barred Norinco from doing business in the United
States, accusing the company of helping Iran's missile program. Norinco
has denied that allegation.
Libya's
order was huge even for Norinco. Jing An warned the Italians that it would
take more than two years to produce that many guns.
"You
must be sure of the quantity of the order," said an e-mail from Jing An
director Yin Weiguo. "I have to admit that it's a big order, and a bit of
a surprise for us."
Before
sending six rifles for testing by Tripoli, the Chinese also requested
export documents known as end-user certificates showing Libya as the final
recipient of the samples.
The job
of obtaining the papers fell to Mansur and other Libyan officials, who,
according to the court documents, were in the pay of the Italians.
Prosecutors believe the group paid the colonel and another Libyan Defense
Ministry official at least $500,000 in kickbacks, including tuition
payments for Mansur's son, studying in Britain. The Italians also agreed
to share with the Libyans the profits from the deal.
Libyan
officials in Tripoli and diplomats in Rome and at the United Nations
declined to discuss the case, and requests for contacts for Mansur and
other officials named in the probe were ignored.
Demands
for even more money frayed relations between the Italians and their
contacts during the spring and summer of 2006, as they waited for the
paperwork from the Libyan government.
In one
wiretapped conversation, Squarzolo, reporting to his bosses from Libya,
suggested that Moretti call the colonel to smooth things out.
"I'm
not calling Mansur," Moretti replied. "Why should I call him, to hear him
ask 'send money to my son?' Tell him we need results, not just requests
and demands."
The
certificates were finally produced in July 2006, signed by an official
identified in the court documents as Major General Abdulrahman Ali Alssied,
the head of the Defense Ministry's procurement office.
While
the Libyans conducted tests, the Italians and the Chinese hammered out the
final contract for 10 million bullets, 300,000 T-56 rifles and 200,000
variants of the T-56 with a double handle.
The
price tag was $40.9 million, which grew to $64.8 million after the
Italians added a 60 percent profit. They told the Chinese that "we have to
share the commission with people in Libya."
Peter
Danssaert, a weapons trafficking expert at the International Peace
Information Service — an independent, Belgium-based institute that focuses
on Sub-Saharan Africa — said the huge order exceeded the needs of Libya's
military.
Also,
the type of T-56 rifle the Libyans were seeking is a decades-old model, an
unlikely choice given Libya's drive to modernize its armed forces by
buying anti-tank missiles and other advanced defense systems from Europe
and Russia.
The
outdated weapons could have been earmarked for low-tech forces in spots
such as Chad, Sudan, Somalia or Congo. Libya has been working to boost its
clout on the continent, now that it has been relieved of U.N. sanctions
and is restoring ties with the West, Danssaert said.
Libya
now sits on the U.N. Security Council, after announcing in 2003 the
dismantling of its clandestine nuclear arms program and compensating
victims' families for the 1988 bombing of Pam Am flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland.
Finardi,
the expert at TransArmsEurope who researched the case, said that though it
is impossible to say which factions within the African countries would
have benefited from the huge shipment, it is likely that the weapons would
have gone to government forces as part of Libya's push to strengthen ties
with its neighbors.
However, in Iraq, there have been accusations that Libya is funneling arms
to insurgents.
In
January, a top Iraqi security official in Anbar province, police Col.
Jubair Rashid Naief, accused Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the eldest son of
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, of aiding a group of 150 foreign and Iraqi
fighters responsible for several attacks in the area. Gadhafi has not
commented on the allegation.
Back in
2006, Iraq also figured in another major negotiation by the Italian
traffickers, who, separately from the Libya case, were working on a $40
million deal to sell more than 100,000 Russian-made AK-47s to the Iraqi
Interior Ministry.
That
deal, negotiated without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command, was
blocked along with the complex Libya scheme when Italian police stepped in
to make the arrests.
Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen
in Beijing, Alfred de Montesquiou in Tripoli, Libya, and Charles J. Hanley
in New York contributed to this report.
Source: Associated Press
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