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North Korea sold weaponry to MILF
North Korea sold more than 10,000 automatic rifles and other arms to the Philippines' largest Muslim guerrilla group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in 1999 and 2000, a leading Japanese daily reported Monday. In addition, investigations by Southeast Asian nations' security authorities show that the MILF told North Korea in June 1999 that it wanted to buy a North Korean mini-submarine, the Yomiuri Shimbun said in a dispatch from Jakarta. Quoting sources among the security authorities of unidentified Southeastern Asian nations, the daily said the arms deals -- mostly taking place in Malaysia -- came to light as a result of documents the authorities confiscated from the MILF in November 2004. In mid-1999, a North Korean businessman named Rim Kyu Do (phonetic) reportedly signed a contract with the MILF's vice chairman for political affairs, Ghazali Jaafar, to sell 10,000 U.S. military M-16 rifles, grenades as well as other types of arms and arms components for a total of $2.2 million. On Sept. 25, 1999, the MILF, which reportedly has close ties with the terrorist group al-Qaida, paid a total of $1 million to North Korea in the form of two checks through a Malaysian middleman as the initial payment for the weapons, the daily said. The weapons were shipped to MILF-controlled areas in the southern Philippine Mindanao Island by the end of December 2000 through a third country that appears to be Malaysia, it said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-01-03 |
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