headland

The Columbian military has seized 30 kilos of uranium, said to be owned by FARC rebels [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia] and linked to the e-mails found on the computer of Raúl Reyes after he was killed in Ecuador last month.

According to today's story ("Columbia says it found uranium linked to FARC," Frances Robles, Miami Herald, March 27, 2008), a February 16 e-mail on Reyes's computer discussed a deal involving uranium. Yet, rather than purchasing uranium, FARC might have been trying to sell uranium to a third party for profit.

"Another of the themes is the one on uranium," said a note allegedly written by a man identified as Edgar Tovar to Raúl -- an apparent reference to Reyes, the FARC's No. 2 man.

"There's a man who supplies me with material for the explosive we prepare, and his name is Belisario and he lives in Bogotá," the note reads. "He sent me the samples and the specifications and they are proposing to sell each kilo for two and a half million dollars, and that they supply and we look for someone to sell to, and that the deal should be with a government that can buy a huge amount. They have 50 kilos ready and can sell much more."

The informants, allegedly people close to "Belisario," gave the military samples of the uranium on March 20. Subsequently, they led the military to the rest of the stash in Pasquilla, a district in the Comuna 20 neighborhood of Bogotá.

The uranium in the samples was said to be "impoverished," but armed forces commander Freddy Padilla said at a press conference on Wednesday that further tests were being conducted to indicate just how dangerous the material really is.

On March 20, it was reported in this space (Headland, Romanian rendezvous; Terrorists and arms dealers in Bucharest) that a Romanian website had cited El Espectador as reporting that Raúl Reyes negotiated the purchase of uranium from an agent of the Ukrainian crime syndicate of Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich. It was further alleged that MI6 had contended that the Ukrainians stole the enriched uranium from an insufficiently guarded storage site in Cheyabinsk, in the Ural Mountains.

The apparently degraded state of the uranium found this week, and the nature of the deal with Belisario, lead to questions as to whether the uranium found was part of the same deal that was said to be discussed in Bucharest last month, and whether FARC has an interest in procuring the materials necessary for making a radioactive bomb of its own.

UPDATE: Counterterrorism Blog ("Colombia Announces Find of 66 Pounds of Uranium It Says Linked to FARC," Jonathan Winer) connects the dots to this story:

• Costa Rica seizes FARC cash as Interpol probes

The information on Reyes's computer led investigators to FARC's cash, stashed in Costa Rica.

Labels: Bucharest, Columbia, FARC, MI6, Raul Reyes, Romania, Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, Ukraine, Venezuela

Terrorists and arms dealers have been busy in Bucharest over the past few months, under the close watch of agents from international secret services.

Raul Reyes (real name: Luis Edgar Devia Silva), who was killed in Ecuador earlier this month by the Columbian army during a bomb attack against FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia], had come to Bucharest, just weeks before his death, to negotiate the purchase of uranium from an agent of the Ukrainian crime syndicate of Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich.

The website of the Romanian newspaper Ziua ( "Romania Swarms With Terrorists," by Bogdan Galca, translated by BBC Monitoring, subscription) cites Colombia's El Espectador as reporting Reyes visit to Romania on a fake Venezuelan passport in mid-January. The Irish journalist Gordon Thomas is quoted in the piece and is said to have had access to reports of the British intelligence service MI6.

The United States issued a warrant for Mogilevich's arrest on charges of fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Russia arrested Mogilevich outside Moscow's World Trade Center last month, along with Arbat Prestige owner Vladimir Nekrasov. (On Monday, a Moscow court refused to grant Mogilevich bail, despite his plea to be dying of diabetes related ailments. See Moscow Times.)

The MI6 report is said to allege that Mogilevich has:

"a working relationship with Al-Qa'idah....It is a known fact that the organization led by Usamah Bin-Ladin is present in Venezuela and in South American countries governed by populist left-wing representatives who oppose the United States."

Columbian Vice President Francisco Santos is quoted by the Spanish television network Antena 3 during the UN Conference on Disarmament as claiming that documents discovered on Reyes' computers revealed that FARC was attempting to purchase fissile material to construct a radiological ("dirty") bomb.

MI6 contends that the Ukrainians stole the enriched uranium from an insufficiently guarded storage site in Cheyabinsk, in the Ural Mountains.

Mogilevich's organization was not the only group attempting to negotiate with FARC in Bucharest.

The notorious Russian-born arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death" (and the model for the main character of the movie "Lord of War," played by Nicholas Cage), was arrested last month in Thailand on the basis of information provided by the Romanian authorities. Bout's associate, Andrew Smulian, had also been in Bucharest to negotiate an arms delivery to FARC.

The U.S. released an indictment of Bout and Smulian that accused them of "plotting in view of procuring material support for a terrorist organization." That material included 100 air-to-ground missiles and missile launchers. The indictment was based on the fact that Smulian had been negotiating with phony FARC leaders who in fact were agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S.

Ziua's description of the sting that led to the arrest of Viktor Bout makes for fascinating reading:

Copenhagen, Curacao, and Bucharest

Bout's arrest operation, as described by the documents of the US authorities, sounds like a spy novel. The informers had meetings in Copenhagen, Curacao, and Bucharest during an operation that first trapped Smulian, one of Bout's associates, the middle man of the arms transaction. According to the official document drawn up by a DEA special agent, undercover American agents succeeded in gaining the trust of the "Merchant of Death" and his associates several months before Smulian was arrested in Thailand. The meetings were held in several countries, including Denmark, Netherland Antilles, and Romania. In 1997, a DEA source (CS-1) contacted Smulian. Under DEA coordination, CS-1 sent an email to Smulian asking him to tell Bout that he had a business proposal. After a short while, Smulian told the agent that Bout was interested in the proposal and that they should meet. Under DEA coordination, CS-1 organized a meeting in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. On 7 January 2008, CS-1 met Smulian in Curacao. CS-1 introduced two other DEA sources (CS-2 and CS-3). The two agents claimed to be FARC representatives. They told Smulian that they were interested in purchasing weapons, particularly missiles. On 22 January 2008, CS-1 met Smulian in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss Smulian and Bout's meeting in Russia about the weapons deal. Bout told Smulian to schedule a meeting with CS-2 and one of his representatives to discuss the transaction. The Russian warned his associate to be extremely careful and instructed him to get rid of cell phones, SIM cards, and other devices that might indicate where he had been and whom he had met. According to Smulian, Bout had said that he could provide the FARC with the weapons, because "any communist is our friend." On 23 January 2008, CS-1 and CS-2 met Smulian in Copenhagen. The three discussed the locations where they could meet Bout. Smulian told the DEA collaborators that "100 pieces were immediately available."

Missiles Photos Shown on Laptop

On 26 January 2008, CS-1 and Smulian came to Bucharest, where they met CS-2 and CS-3. Once they arrived, the latter told Smulian that they wanted to meet Bout in person to finalize the arms deal and deliver the money.

Smulian told them that Bout might have been arrested if he had come to Romania. At a certain point, CS-3 talked with Bout on the telephone about potential meeting locations, among which Cuba, Nicaragua, or Armenia. After the discssion with the "Merchant of Death," Smulian showed the three CS on his laptop photos of the missiles that were going to be delivered, pointing out that Bout could also supply helicopters that could be equipped with double-range missiles. Smulian also said that the weapons were in Bulgaria and that their "transport" would cost $5 million. Several days later, Smulian told CS-2 that "the weapons were ready in Bulgaria." On 5 February 2008, the Romanian authorities intercepted a conversation between Bout and CC-2, one of his associates, who operates an air company in our country [Romania]. On 7 February, CS-2 gave Smulian an e-mail address (bogotazo32@yahoo.com) that could be used by Smulian and Bout. On 12 February, CS-2 received an e-mail: "Buenos Dias! this is the e-mail we can use for commjnications. Best regards. Friend of Andrew." The address of the sender was created on 12 February under the name Victor But [name as published]. The DEA believes that the message was sent by the "Merchant of Death." The next meeting was held in Thailand, where Bout was captured.

Bout remains under detention in a maximum-security prison on the outskirts of Bangkok. Today, a Thai court extended by 12 days his detention, pending formal charges in Thailand. (See Russian Arms Dealer Jail Stay Lengthened," Guardian, March 19, 2008).

The DEA used a similar sting of a phony deal with FARC to capture Syrian arms trafficker Monzer al-Kassar, the "Prince of Marbella." (See Syrian arms dealer stung in DEA pseudo-deal with Colombian guerillas.) Kassar was arrested on June 7, 2007 in Madrid, following a tip from the Romanians, one day after two of his accomplices, a Chilean and a Palestinian suspected of terrorist activities in the United States, were arrested in Bucharest. Kassar had ties with Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein. Michael J. Garcia, U.S. federal prosecutor in New York, alleges that Kassar has "supported terrorists and insurgents by providing state-of-art weapons that fuelled most of the conflicts started in the past 30 years." Kassar's customers include groups from Nicaragua, Brazil, Cyprus, Bosnia, Croatia, Somalia, the Palestinian territories, Iran and Iraq.

As Bucharest prepares to host the 20th NATO summit on April 2-4, security preparations have been understandably extensive.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Bucharest, Columbia, FARC, MI6, Monzer al-Kassar, NATO, Osama bin Laden, Raul Reyes, Romania, Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, Ukraine, Venezuela, Viktor Bout

What would a Lebanese company in the Bekaa Valley that sells frozen fruits and vegetables want with a Ukrainian factory producing the special steel pipes needed for nuclear reactors and rocket production?

The Ukrayinska Pravda website in Kiev published the following report on February 20 entitled "Arabs want to buy a plant working for rocket production. For Al-Qa'idah?" (BBC English translation by subscription).

The state-owned Nikopol pipe plant, a producer of unique stainless thin-walled seamless pipes and titanium-and-nickel alloys, which currently undergoes bankruptcy procedures, can change hands to Junet, a Lebanese company willing to invest 35m dollars in the plant.

The director-general of the National Space Agency of Ukraine, Yuriy Alyekseyev, said this in a letter to the plant's financial readjustment manager.

The output of the plant, which entered a state of financial readjustment in June 2007, is used in rocket production, aviation and in the nuclear sector. It is worth noting that Junet was never before involved in this business. It sells frozen vegetables, fruit, juice and grain.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Ukraine

Though opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was officially declared the winner in Ukraine's third round of presidential elections late Monday, a representative for his competitor, Viktor Yanukovych, vowed to make an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court. Yanukovych's campaign manager alleged on Monday that a massive legal action was being prepared to prove widespread fraud in the re-runoff was responsible for the apparent victory of Yuschenko over Yanukovych. The Central Election Commission declared Yushchenko to be the winner on the basis of returns that showed him to have garnered 52 percent of the vote to just over 44 percent for Yanukovych.

The allegations of fraud received corroboration from Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor of Global Information System. Bodansky, an election observer for all three rounds of the Ukrainian Presidential elections, filed a report in Monday's Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily and claims that his team of observers witnessed serious fraud in a mental hospital in Vinnytsya, 200 miles south of Kiev. Reports of comparable fraud at other hospitals were reported by Ukrainian, Russian and East European monitors. In the mental hospital in Vinnytsya, Bodansky reports, a list of patients eligible to vote had been drawn up three days prior to the election. Just a day before the election, after many hospitals had failed to produce a list of patients who had the mental capability to vote, lawyers for the Yushchenko camp persuaded the Ukrainian supreme court to rule that such a list deprived patients of the basic right to vote and thus that no list could be a precondition for voting. Consequently, individuals seeking to vote in the hospital did not need a voter's permit form, mailed in advance to the voter's residence, but could simply fill out a short form declaring their intention to vote in the hospital. Their names were then added to the list by hand, and no attempt was made to check if these voters had voted in the polling station associated with their primary residence. Bodansky writes that he witnessed a stream of people coming in from the street, filling out the form, and voting. The list of voters had well over 800 names by late morning, even though the hospital records showed only 400 patients. Bodansky claims that by the end of the day of polling, the number of voters in the "Orange counties" exceeded the head count of voters by about three percent. Since the regular stations reported no great discrepancies in the two counts, Bodansky concludes that the added votes came from the "extraordinary" stations, such as ones in hospitals like the one he visited in Vinnytsya.

Bodansky doubts that the alleged fraud accounted for the entire eight percent lead Yushchenko achieved. He thinks the remainder of Yushchenko's lead resulted from fatalism on the part of many Yanukovich voters who thought there was no point in resisting the pressure from the West. He cites a joke that was making the rounds on the eve of the election as evidence of widespread cynicism:

The Ukrainian Central Elections Committee requested several governments in
the West to assist in preparing the right kind of form for the polls. The US
State Department sent the following text: "Dear voter, You have to chose one of
the following two options: 1. Viktor Yushchenko is elected the next president of
Ukraine; or 2. There is going to be a fourth round of presidential elections."

Bodansky deplores the pressure Washington has exerted to secure a quick resolution in favor of Yushchenko. He reports that on December 28, the U.S. State Department "prodded" the Ukrainian courts "to uphold the re-run election victory" of Yushchenko. While sources say Washington will wait for the Supreme Court's ruling before formally congratulating Yushchenko, the Bush administration is plainly more interested in seeing Ukraine move away from Moscow's orbit than in a thorough investigation of the process that produced the favored result.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Yossef Bodansky

Ukrainians return for a third time to vote in their Presidential elections tomorrow, December 26. Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System, reports in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily (December 24, 2004) on his observations as part of a team of election monitors in the first two rounds. Bodansky contends that the elections were free, fair, and legal (though, significantly, he does not mention the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko). He sees the unprecedented move of repeating a Presidential election to be caused by the pressure of Western Europe and the United States, along with a pre-planned post-election propaganda war by the Yushchenko campaign. He notes that no one on his team saw anyone conducting exit polls in the second round, undermining the claims of the Yushchenko campaign that the results of these polls are evidence of fraud. On the subject of exit polls, see Which Side Attempted a Fraud in the Ukraine? for a discussion of an earlier story in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily: "Extent of Soros-Linked Involvement Becoming Clear in Attempting to Seize Ukraine Elections for Yuschenko (December 3, 2004).

Bodansky is perplexed that the United States would side with the Western European support for Yuschenko's "coup attempt." He notes that Yuschenko, on the eve of the elections, gave assurances to the leaders of Germany, France and Spain that once elected he would immediately withdraw Ukrainian troops from Iraq. On the other hand, Viktor Yanukovich told Washington and Moscow that the Ukrainian contingent would not leave Iraq until the last U.S. troops left.

My guess is that U.S. statements of support for the "Orange Revolution" were initiated unilaterally by factions within the State Department that are dubious of, if not opposed to, the Bush Administration's Iraq policies. Continuing speculations about the source of the dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko prevent the Administration from any action other than awaiting the results of Sunday's third round of elections.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Global Information System, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Yossef Bodansky

Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily on Friday claims that Global Information System sources in the Ukraine have found a pattern of fraud and manipulation, traceable to groups supported by George Soros, in support of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.

The evidence alleged by this report contradicts the generally accepted story in the West that electoral fraud of a massive scale was attempted in support of the candidacy of outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs staff indicated that all of the alleged "exit poll" reporting during the second stage of the election, on November 21, 2004, was fabricated: there were, in fact, no exit polls allowed at the polling stations, so all the reporting claiming to have evidence based on the alleged overwhelming support in exit polls for Yuschenko was completely fabricated.

...Moreover, opinion polling nationwide during the run-up to the election showed that Prime Minister Yanukovich -- not European Union- and Soros-backed Yuschenko -- would win the election convincingly, but not surprisingly: Yanukovich's support base was the Ukrainian Orthodox Christian, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, and Russian communities, largely centered on the East of Ukraine, and these groups make up some 60 percent of the population. Yuschenko's supporters, the Uniates (Ukrainian Catholics) of Western Ukraine, constitute only some 40 percent of the population. The demographics -- and the close alignment of each population group to each candidate -- meant that a Yuschenko win would have been extremely unlikely, and the late public opinion polling in the week before the election confirmed this.

In the day or so before the election, a well-orchestrated team of Yuschenko supporters put in place their protest machinery, ready to denounce the election results.

...The monitors reported that, in fact, minor problems noted in the first round of the election had been scrupulously corrected by the second round, and that, by and large, there was not the widespread fraud which the Yuschenko team claimed.
["Extent of Soros-Linked Involvement Becoming Clear in Attempting to Seize Ukraine Elections for Yuschenko," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, December 3, 2004.]

Though the support of George Soros on one side of any political issue tempts me to take the other, I remain agnostic, for the time being, on the factual issues surrounding the polling in the Ukraine.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, George Soros, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko