" In the early days, they transported gladiolas; later, frozen chickens and
then diamonds, mining equipment, Kalashnikov assault rifles, bullets,
helicopter gunships and even, Bout says, U.N. peacekeepers, French soldiers
and African heads of state. The names of the men Bout came to count as his
personal friends and customers included Massoud, Mobutu,
Savimbi, Taylor, Bemba."

***************

Comrades in the UPCnet will remember this
MUSEVENI-KAGAME-SAVIMBI-BOUT-ALQAIDA-GADHAFI gang story that was posted here
some months ago.

Most likely I even must have forwarded the same to the Gambia List and
others.

Best regards,

Nyar'Onyango

************


----- Original Message -----
From: "Binneh Minteh" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 4:30 AM
Subject: NewYork Times August 17, 2003


> Christopher Anderson/VII, for The New York Times
>
> Now see the dailyoberver.gm and tell me how Yahya operates? Yahya is a
> tribalist,play the divide and rule game without knowing the best way to do
> so.I will come on that with another article.Today OPTV is fighting the war
> against terrorism and we must expose leaders like Yahya to the United
> States.He was very close to Charles Taylor and Mobuto and is therefore
> damaged goods for West Africa
>
>
> ARMS AND THE MAN
> (Page 2 of 11)
> ''Bout was brilliant,'' Gayle Smith said recently. ''Had he been dealing
in
> legal commodities, he would have been considered one of the world's
> greatest businessmen. He's a fascinating but destructive character. We
were
> tryi
> ng to bring peace, and Bout was bringing war.''
>
> C.I.A. and MI6 agents on the ground in Africa first picked up Bout's scent
> in the early 1990's, when his fleet of planes began crisscrossing the
> continent. In the early days, they transported gladiolas; later, frozen
> chickens and then diamonds, mining equipment, Kalashnikov assault rifles,
> bullets, helicopter gunships and even, Bout says, U.N. peacekeepers, Frenc
h
> soldiers and African heads of state. The names of the men Bout came to
> count as his personal friends and customers included Massoud, Mobutu,
> Savimbi, Taylor, Bemba. It was not until the summer of 2000 that the
N.S.C.
> realized it had stumbled on not only the most prolific arms trafficking
> operation in Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan but probably the best
> connected (and protected) private-weapons transport and brokering network
> in the world.
>
> Smith and others took
>  their information to Richard C. Clarke, then the
> chief of counterterrorism for the N.S.C. ''Get me a warrant,'' Clarke
> responded.
>
> But because Bout's reputed crimes were committed outside United States
> borders, the N.S.C. had no U.S. law to use on him. Instead, the N.S.C.
> initiated an operation that drew on the resources of intelligence agencies
> in at least seven countries and sparked cabinet-level diplomacy on four
> continents. Belgium issued its own warrant for Bout's arrest a year
later --
>  not for arms trafficking but for crimes related to money laundering and
> diamond smuggling. In the end, the pursuit failed. Victor Bout is still at
> large, a fugitive from international justice. But unlike Osama bin Laden
> and Saddam Hussein, he lives in plain sight -- in Moscow, under the
> apparent protection of a post-Communist system that has profited from his
> activities as much as he has.
>
> He has also
>  evaded journalists, U.N. investigators and watchdog
> organizations like Human Rights Watch. Until now, the only publicly
> available photo of him was secretly taken by a Belgian journalist in March
> 2001 on an airstrip in Congo. His only statements have been brief denials
> of his role in arms trafficking. He walked out of a CNN interview in March
> 2002. That same month, six weeks after a Los Angeles Times article
> connected Bout to shipments of arms and recruits to the Taliban and Al
> Qaeda, he released a statement in which he described himself as a father,
> husband, entrepreneur -- and a scapegoat. Since then, he has been silent.
>
> Though Bout denies his involvement in arms trafficking, he has been
> persistently and publicly linked to weapons shipments, charges supported
by
> paper and money trails, confessions, eyewitness accounts and multiple
> intelligence reports. The longer Bout has remained out of the reach of
> in
> ternational law, the bigger his legend has grown. In many ways, he is now
> the public face of a giant international criminal structure.
>
> In the eight months between the time I first asked Bout for an interview
> and when he finally granted it, I came to understand the general shape of
> the political and criminal twilight that conceals the commerce of arms
> trafficking. In June, I laid out some of what I believed in a letter. Two
> days later, Bout called and asked me to come to Moscow.
>
> lowers, that's where it all started,'' Chichakli said. It was midnight,
and
> we had moved on from the hotel lounge to an Italian restaurant in downtown
> Moscow full of people drinking vodka and eating pasta and pizza. Bout
> ordered a carrot juice and an arugula salad. ''He's a vegetarian,''
> Chichakli said. ''He's an ecologist. He believes in saving the rain
> forest.''
>
> Bout nodded. ''I've been giv
> en a chance to reinvent myself.'' It was not
> immediately clear why he had chosen to see me. He seemed intrigued by his
> legend, yet wanted simultaneously to fan it and diminish it.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> RELATED ARTICLES
>
>
>
>   Bulgaria Becomes a Weapons Bazaar  (August 3, 1998)  $
>
>   21 Nations Seek to Limit the Traffic in Light Weapons  (July 13, 1998)
$
>
>   Peru Reporters Say Officials Direct Harassment Effort  (July 6, 1998)  $
>
>   Secret Bosnian Arms Deals  (November 10, 1996)  $
>
> Find more results for Arms Trafficking and Armament, Defense and Military
> Forces .
>
>
>
>
> TOP MAGAZINE ARTICLES
>
>
>
>  Arms and the Man
>
>  Bookies in Exile
>
>  Fiddling With the Reception
>
>  Lost in the Music
>
>  The Way We Live Now: Help Wanted
>
> BINNEH S MINTEH
> NEW YORK UNIVSERSITY
>
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