Israeli arms dealers differ over responsibility for shipment to Colombian paramilitaries

AP ^ | 05/07/02 | JUAN ZAMORANO

[miamimark]

PANAMA CITY, Panama - The Nicaraguan government, Israeli arms dealers and the U.S. government have denied knowing that a shipment of Kalishnikov rifles was headed to a Colombian paramilitary group that the U.S. government has branded as terrorist.

The U.S. State Department said it knew vaguely about the deal, but thought it involved only old weapons bound for collectors in the United States — not 3,000 Kalishnikov rifles headed for the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which has been implicated in some of the most brutal massacres of that country's civil war.

One of the four Israeli arms dealers implicated in the purchase of the rifles from a police stockpile in Nicaragua said he had been interested in sending weapons to the Congo, not Colombia.

Wes Carrington, spokesman for the State Department's Western Hemisphere section, said former Nicaraguan Interior Minister Rene Herrera had mentioned the trade to U.S. Ambassador Oliver P. Garza in early 2000.

Garza did not oppose it because his understanding was that the weapons were collectibles for the U.S. market. "That was the extent of our awareness of any kind of arms deal," Carrington said.

The presidents of Panama and Nicaragua were scheduled to meet late Tuesday or Wednesday in Costa Rica to share information and coordinate an investigation into the shipment. Until now, officials in the two countries have accused one another of lying and incompetence.

In Guatemala, authorities said Tuesday they had suspended the weapons-trading license of a company run by two Israelis that bought the weapons from the Nicaraguan police.

That company, known as GIRSA, said it had turned the weapons over to another Israeli-owned company in Panama, DIGAL, which was supposedly representing Panama's police forces, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported.

Panama says GIRSA presented false documents certifying the guns were bound for Panama. GIRSA said it got them from DIGAL, El Tiempo reported. In any event, the ship carrying the weapons went straight to Colombia, where it was unloaded shortly before midnight on Nov. 10, according to Colombian investigators.

GIRSA's partners have refused to comment beyond saying that investigations would show they had nothing to do with the shipment to Colombia.

In a telephone interview from Africa with Panamanian reporters, DIGAL partner Shimon Yelinek acknowledged he had inspected the Kalishnikov rifles in Nicaragua, but backed away because of the "scandalously good" price being offered.

The Nicaraguans were offering to sell the rifles at dlrs 30 to dlrs 40 each, less than a tenth of their market value. Yelinek said he assumed the deal involved government corruption.

He said he had been interested in buying guns for the Congo.

Yelenik's Panamanian lawyer, Carlos Carrillo, said Yelenik ran an import-export business in the Congo, where an ongoing civil war has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Government officials in Nicaragua have denied any knowledge that the weapons were headed for Colombia, and they have said they never contacted Panama to see if it was the real buyer of the weapons.

[miamimark]

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