Mystery deepens over diverted AK-47s

PANAMA CITY, Panama - These are the only two things known for certain about a wayward shipment of 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles that has created an uproar in at least three countries: (1) The shipment left Nicaragua on Nov. 2 aboard the 200-foot, Panama-flagged tramp steamer Otterloo. (2) It was bound for the Panamanian police.

Everything else about the shipment remains a mystery. But the 173-ton arsenal, bought from the Nicaraguan police in a deal that seemed so clean Managua officials had notified the U.S. Embassy, evolved into one of the largest and most daring arms smuggling capers in the region.

Officials still do not know who diverted the weapons to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC, an 11,000-member paramilitary force on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist groups.

The guns significantly boosted the AUC's ability to wage war against Colombia's leftist guerrillas and protect the cocaine and heroin industries at a time when the Bush administration is trying to increase and broaden military assistance to Bogotá.

And while the tale of the missing weapons may sound like fiction, it is an all-too-real story that illustrates a troubling legacy of Central America's civil wars in the 1980s -- the existence of too many surplus weapons.

Tens of thousands of AK-47s handed out by Washington and Havana to allies in the region at the time were never retrieved. Today, those weapons fuel the region's high crime rate and narcotics trade as they are bartered for cocaine with Colombia's AUC and leftist guerrillas.

Nicaraguans now hold 30,000 illegal AK-47s, Police Commissioner Edwin Cordero said recently. El Salvador's 6 million people have 450,000 unregistered firearms, the Central American University en San Salvador estimated earlier this year.

Negotiations for the Panama deal began in late 1999, when two Israeli arms dealers based in Guatemala told the Nicaraguan police they wanted to buy 5,000 AK-47s, 2.5 million rounds of 7.62 ammunition and 6,000 bayonets -- but only if the guns were manufactured before 1986.

Ori Zoller and Uzi Kisslevich explained they wanted old AKs because they planned to sell them to collectors in the United States, where a 1986 law banned the import of automatic weapons manufactured after that year.

''That doesn't make sense,'' said Alen Latour, spokesman for the Miami office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco. The 1986 law did not distinguish between weapons made before and after that year, he said.

Nevertheless, the 1986 requirement was included in the contract signed June 2, 2000, by then-Nicaraguan Police Commissioner Francisco Montealegre and the Israelis' firm in Guatemala, GIRSA, according to a copy obtained by The Herald.

It was to be a barter deal: In exchange for the old weapons, ammunition and bayonets, GIRSA would deliver to the Nicaraguan police 100 Mini-Uzi submachine guns and 467 Jerico pistols, all made in Israel.

Then-Interior Minister Rene Herrera said he informed U.S. Ambassador Oliver Garza about it in late 2000, and that the embassy did not object. ''We had no reason to believe it would take the course that it did,'' embassy spokesman Michael Stevens told reporters.

But the deal began changing dramatically early last year, with a new destination, new requirements and new quantities.

Zoller notified Montealegre in February of 2001 that he had made a deal to sell the guns to the Panamanian police, instead of U.S. dealers, through a company in Panama City, Inversiones Digal, owned by another Israeli businessman, Shimon Yalinek.

The new deal: In exchange for the same number of Mini-Uzis and pistols, GIRSA now wanted 3,000 newer AK-47s -- not 5,000 pre-1986 models -- plus 5 million rounds of ammunition and 9,000 bayonets for the rifles.

In March of 2001, GIRSA gave Montealegre a purchase order from the Panama police, dated Feb. 10, 2001 and bearing the signatures of four Panamanian police, interior ministry and comptroller's department officials, Nicaraguan police officials have said.

A Panamanian police report on the case obtained by The Herald maintains that the purchase order and all the signatures on it were fake.

Montealegre, who retired as police commissioner in September 2001, never informed the Nicaraguan comptrollers' office about the new shipment's new destination. His successor, Cordero, finally did that in a letter dated Oct. 22.

GIRSA air-freighted the 9,000 bayonets to Miami in October 2001, said a senior Nicaraguan government official briefed on the case, apparently to be sold to American collectors.

The guns and bullets were loaded aboard the Otterloo on Oct. 26 in Nicaragua's Caribbean port of Rama, in 14 20-foot containers, according to shipping documents made public by the Nicaraguan police.

The documents show the Otterloo was to deliver the shipment to the Panamanian port of Colón. Instead, it left Rama on Nov. 3 and sailed to the Colombian port of Turbo, where port authorities said it unloaded 24 containers of ''plastic balls'' on Nov. 6

A senior AUC official in Colombia told The Herald the guns were indeed received by the group in Turbo, a region that it largely controls, to boost its war against Colombia's Marxist guerrillas.

Colombia's military queried the Panamanian navy about the Otterloo on Jan. 29 this year and together with Panamanian and Nicaraguan security officials launched a secret investigation of the case, according to the Panamanian police report. The investigation was stymied after the El Tiempo newspaper in Bogotá broke the story April 21.

The scandal has now erupted into mutual finger-pointing between the Nicaraguan and Panamanian police, the businessmen in Guatemala and Panama and the Otterloo's crew.

President Mireya Moscoso of Panama and her counterpart, Enrique Bolaños of Nicaragua, who took office in January, have asked the Washington-based Organization of American States to investigate the shipment.

''As of today it is not known which criminal organization was responsible'' for diverting the shipment to Colombia, the Panamanian police report concluded.

Zoller and Kisslevich, the Guatemalan arms merchants, blame Yalinek and another Panamanian businessman, Marco Shrem, claiming they portrayed themselves as purchasing agents for the Panamanian police and provided the allegedly fake purchase order.

Shrem has denied any wrongdoing, as well as Panamanian media reports that he is a friend of Panamanian Police Chief Carlos Barés, in statements to Panamanian prosecutors and U.S. Embassy officials in Panama City.

Yalinek's lawyer, Carlos Carrillo, said his client was not involved in the weapons deal either. Yalinek, who has been traveling abroad since the scandal surfaced in April, has not been questioned.

Cordero has publicly accused Yalinek and Barés of involvement in the deal, and Nicaraguan officials have privately repeated unproven allegations of corruption against the Panamanian police chief.

Panama's La Prensa newspaper recently published a copy of a Jan. 21, 2001 letter in which then-Interior Minister Winston Spadafora cautioned Barés and other security officials to follow proper procedures for purchasing weapons.

The letter was triggered by Bares's previous purchases of AK-47s in Hungary and night vision devices in the United States without the required approval from the Interior Ministry's finance department, according to the former department official.

Montealegre, the former Nicaraguan police commissioner, has declined all public comments.

Meanwhile -- to add to the confusion -- the Otterloo's cargo master, Panamanian Carlos Aguilar, has told prosecutors in Panama that the freighter did not load any containers in Rama. He showed them a ship's log that agrees with his version.

The freighter's Mexico-based owner, Trafalgar Maritime, recently closed its office in Panama. Police have not been able to question Trafalgar's owner nor the Otterloo's captain and other crewmen aboard the trip from Nicaragua to Turbo, all Mexicans.

The 25-year-old ship now swings at anchor in Colón, impounded after it docked there Dec. 13, first by former owners who claim Trafalgar defaulted on payments after buying the vessel early last year, and later by Panamanian authorities investigating the arms shipment.

"The police never arranged to acquire these arms," Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso assured journalists.

Didn't you tell me the police chief was involved with gun running?

Yes, I did. Panama newspapers are censored from pointing the finger outright. Reporters are threatened with jail if they cross that line. Foreign reporters have been kicked out the country for saying too much. There is no doubt the police chief is mixed up in this. By the way, he used to work for Noriega.

Ayo Ghorkhali!

I've carried and used Kukris [or Khukuris, if you prefer a spelling a bit closer to the Nepalese pronunciation] since my first run-in with members of the British Army of the Rhine's Gurkha troops on the East German/Czech border with West Germany in the 1960s. The knives are not only practical and beautifully efficient, but are a historic item and artifact themselves, as much as an ancestor's sword or rifle, whether carried on frontline duty where history was made or less well-known locales where others did their duties. And, of course, the Khukuris are still going to war today.

My own generally follows thwe MK43 WWII wartime pattern, though my sheath/scabbard is arranged a bit differently.

I love the Ghurka Kukris, and think they are the best knives anywhere in the planet! Hands down!

They do grow on you....

You can pick up a pretty fair Khukri from Atlanta Cutlery for around $25, or an excellent Nepalese-made import from Ghurkha House or Himalayan Imports at around $100. If you like something a bit more Americanized, check out the very handsome rubber-handled versions made in the USA by Lynn Thompson's Cold Steel firm. And though not a traditional Khukuri, the Becker Tool Machaxe is very much khukuri-derived and influenced.

Feel free to FReepmail me if you want additional info or sources, or if you're interested in the past and upcoming classes on the use of the Khukuri in Illinois and Ohio.

-archy-/-

Lets see, 14 cargo containers 20 ft long each filled with AK-47's with a strong Mexico connection, a shipment of cyanide stolen in Mexico, Al-Quida saying it is going to kill lots of Americans soon...... hmmmmmm, probably nothing to be worried about, just Central American drug lords.

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