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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Man Admits He Tried To Smuggle 20,000 Rifles To Syria
2006-06-27
Singapore, 27 June (AKI) - A Singaporean man has pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle 20,000 assault rifles from Bulgaria to Syria last year, a local newspaper reported Tuesday. Colin Mak Yew Loong, 30, admitted to a Singapore court on Monday to conspiring to move the AKMS assault rifles, valued at 3.4 million US dollars to Syria, the Straits Times daily said. His co-accused, B.R. Chaandrran, 45, denied the charges.

Prosecutors allege that Chaandrran, an employee of Dannhauser, a company specialising in weapons and ammunition, tried to clinch a deal for himself and Mak after the company refused to supply a Syrian arms dealer with the rifles.
Mak, the managing director of a Swiss-based firm specialising in computer software, according to the charges helped broker the deal between a Bulgarian seller and the Syrian buyer and hid the transaction with false documents.
Note that this was a sale to a Syrian arms dealer, not the government of Syria. Governments not under arms embargo don't need to buy small arms on the black market. These guns would have been going to some terrorist organization.

Acting on a tip-off, Singapore customs officers moved in and found incriminating e-mail messages, exchanged between May and September last year, in Mak's computer. They also found that he had acted as broker for the cargo without having first registered with the customs service. Deputy Public Prosecutor Lee Cheow Han said that there was enough evidence to incriminate the two defendants even if the guns had not passed through Singapore and even though the delivery was not made. The act of brokering the deal without registering strategic goods was an offence, the prosecutor said.

The AKMS belongs to the originally Russian-made AK47 family of assault rifles.

Two other Singaporeans have recently been caught abroad for illegal arms dealing. Ronald Chia Kia Cheng, 60, a retired senior Singaporean air force was arrested in San Diego, United States for allegedly trying to buy American assault rifles, also for potential buyers in Syria. He faces charges of contravening an US arms embargo on Syria.
That's for US arms, wouldn't apply to Bulgaria
The other case, in Hawaii in April, Singaporean Ibrahim Amran, 26, and three Indonesian men were arrested for allegedy trying to illegally buy weapons, including aircraft missiles and Heckler Koch sub-machine guns, for a total value of 3.3 million US dollars.
Posted by:Steve

#4  Or Hizbullah, the insurgency in Iraq, or for further export to, say, the Horn of Africa.
Posted by: Fordesque   2006-06-27 21:00  

#3  unless of course the Syrians are using smuggling and dealers to get arms to Hamas, to keep their hands "clean"
Posted by: liberalhawk   2006-06-27 09:43  

#2  The AKMS belongs to the originally Russian-made AK47 family of assault rifles.

Yes, many here on the Rant have met the... family.
Posted by: Besoeker   2006-06-27 09:43  

#1  "These guns would have been going to some terrorist organization."

Maybe. The fact that a group living in an authoritarian state, wants small arms, unapproved by the govt, does NOT ipso facto make them terrorists.

Note that Hamas, Hezbollah, etc dont need to smuggle arms into Syria, since they get suppport from the regime.

Ergo this was either for AQ, for the muslim brotherhood, for Syrian Kurds, or for other enemies of the Syrian regime.

Only org on that list that is clearly terrorist is AQ, and 20,000 assault rifles isnt really their MO for action in a hostile country. (Pashtunistan not being a hostile country, from their POV)
Posted by: liberalhawk   2006-06-27 09:41  

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