Alleged terror arms merchant busted in Spain

Washington Post:

A longtime international arms trafficker was arrested Thursday evening in Spain, where he has a mansion, on U.S. charges that he was conspiring to sell millions of dollars in arms to Colombian rebels.

Since the early 1970s, Monzer al-Kassar has "supported terrorists and insurgents by providing them with high-powered weapons that have fueled the most violent conflicts of the last three decades," Michael J. Garcia, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement released yesterday. Along the way, Kassar sold weapons to groups in Nicaragua, Brazil, Cyprus, Bosnia, Croatia, Somalia, the Palestinian territories, Iran and Iraq, Garcia and Karen P. Tandy, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief, said in the statement.

Kassar also has had known associations with Mohammed Abbas -- the former terrorist leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front who is also known as Abu Abbas -- and with Saddam Hussein's older son, Uday, who was killed by U.S. troops in Iraq in 2003. Kassar also was identified as selling arms to the contras in the House-Senate report on the Iran-contra scandal.

In a September interview with the British newspaper the Observer, the Syrian-born Kassar said he had retired from arms dealing and was living peacefully in his 15-room Renaissance palazzo near Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol.

But his remarks to the Observer may have been untrue, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday in New York. It alleges that Kassar and two associates conspired to provide the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with small arms and ammunition, thousands of machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and possibly surface-to-air missile systems "to protect their cocaine trafficking business and to attack United States interests in Colombia."

According to the indictment, Kassar was taken in by two confidential informants working for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who successfully passed themselves off as FARC representatives seeking weapons to be used against American and Colombian units. At a Feb. 6 meeting at Kassar's Marbella home, the two informants provided an initial list that mainly included rifles and grenades. Kassar set a price of $7.8 million to $13.5 million plus the cost of transporting the weapons to Colombia, according to the indictment.

At the same time, the arms dealer offered "to send 1,000 men to the informants to fight with the FARC against U.S. military officers in Colombia," the indictment says.

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Spanish police arrested Kassar in Madrid. His alleged co-defendants, Tareq Mousa al-Ghazi and Luis Felipe Morena-Godoy, were arrested in Romania.

There were also negotiations for surface to air missiles.

It should be noted that the Democrats have been undercutting administration policy in Columbia by cutting funding for the government in its fight with FARC. As this arrest suggest, that is a very misguided policy. Columbia is an ally we need more than ever with its border on Venezuela. President Uribe is a voice of sanity in the region and we need to support his fight with the drug thugs and help hem stand up to Hugo Chavez. The Democrats actions in cutting aid to Columbia are just more evidence that they should never be trusted in matters of national security. Bob Barr also discusses the mistreatment of President Uribe.