By BENJAMIN WEISER
Published: March 17, 2009

A Palestinian-born businessman was convicted in New York Tuesday on charges that he conspired with the Syrian arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar in a plot to sell weapons, including 15 surface-to-air missiles, to a Columbian terrorist organization.
The businessman, Tareq Mousa al-Ghazi, was told that the arms would be used to kill American military officers, the evidence showed.
Mr. Ghazi, 62, is the third man found guilty in the plot, which involved an elaborate sting operation run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which used informants who posed as middlemen and said they were seeking the weapons for a Columbian rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Prosecutors said the men also agreed to sell 4,000 grenades, nearly 9,000 assault rifles and thousands of pounds of explosives to the FARC for a profit of more than $1 million.
Mr. Ghazi was acquitted of a broader charge, conspiring to kill Americans generally. But he was convicted of three conspiracy counts, including the plot to kill American military officers and providing material assistance to a terrorist group.

Mr. Kassar, who the authorities say had been involved in arms trafficking since the 1970s, was convicted along with an associate in November and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The associate, Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, received 25 years in prison.
Mr. Ghazi faces a minimum of 25 years in prison and could receive a life term when he is sentenced by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Ghazi’s lawyer, Marc A. Agnifilo, said he would appeal. At trial, he argued that his client had been entrapped by the government, lured into the plot as a way for the government to apprehend Mr. Kassar.
But prosecutors denied that, saying Mr. Ghazi had been a willing and ready participant. “He did everything he could to get the deal done and get paid,” a prosecutor, Boyd M. Johnson III, told the jury.

Jurors interviewed after the verdict said they spent more than a day discussing the question of entrapment, but ultimately rejected it after receiving clarification on the law from the judge.

The whole article from The New York Times

Jean-Charles Marchiani Pardoned by French President

French pardon of bribe-taker raises hackles
By VERENA VON DERSCHAU – 9 hours ago
PARIS (AP) — Among 27 prisoners granted French presidential pardons this holiday season is one with an unusual resume.
Jean-Charles Marchiani, a former secret agent, helped free French hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s and Bosnia in the 1990s, and served in the European parliament and as a governor in the south of France.
The influential conservative has also been convicted twice of taking big bribes for business contracts and is currently on trial in an international arms trafficking case. But French President Nicolas Sarkozy decided that Marchiani has paid his dues, and granted him a partial pardon this week that could see him soon free.

Sarkozy's enemies are crying foul.

"How can we talk about justice, when the same rules are not applied to everyone?" asked the leader of France's main opposition force, Socialist Martine Aubry. She noted that Sarkozy has rejected appeals for a mass early release for prisoners convicted of certain minor crimes.
Sarkozy was in Brazil all week, away from the fray.

The president's office made no direct comment about Marchiani's pardon, but issued a statement Tuesday announcing 27 partial or total pardons "motivated by acts of courage or bravery ... exhibited during or before their incarceration."

The CGT-Penitentiary prison workers' union called the gesture "scandalous." "What an act of bravery, to reside in the VIP section of the La Sante prison," the union said in a statement, referring to Marchiani, held in the La Sante prison in Paris.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Marchiani's "personality and past actions were certainly taken into account" in deciding the pardon.

Four former French hostages in Lebanon appealed to Sarkozy to pardon Marchiani. So did Marchiani's former boss — Charles Pasqua, an icon of France's conservative establishment facing a tangle of corruption accusations himself.

Pasqua, a former interior minister, said "there is nothing extraordinary" about Sarkozy's decision. "Let's look at the services rendered, look at the risks undertaken, the courage that he exhibited, the results he obtained in freeing the hostages," Pasqua said on RTL radio.
Marchiani, close to former President Jacques Chirac, rose to national political prominence after helping negotiate the release of three French hostages held by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad movement in Lebanon in 1988. They were among several foreigners, including Americans, held in Lebanon at the time.

In exchange, France agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Iran strained over the Iran-Iraq war, and paid off the last segment of a billion-dollar dispute over a nuclear energy project with Iran.

Marchiani was later accused of laundering money meant for use as a ransom for the hostages, though the French government has denied paying a ransom.

In 2005, Marchiani was convicted in two corruption cases: one for taking kickbacks in the sale of gearboxes from a German company to the French Defense Ministry for use in Leclerc tanks, and another for profiting from a contract between a Dutch firm and the Paris airports authority over the sale of conveyor belts in the 1980s. He was a government official for at least part of the period when he received the bribes.

At the time, he said, "I don't think I deserve this kind of sentence. I think I have, for 42 years, served my country in dignity." He said he didn't regret anything he had done and would do it again.

The court disagreed. It said Marchiani "gave France the image of a country where corruption allows one to buy public decision-makers without difficulty."

Marchiani, 65, was notified Tuesday that his sentence was reduced by six months. Since he has already served 13 months of a three-year sentence, the partial pardon means he is now eligible to request conditional release.

Even if Marchiani leaves prison soon, he won't be free of legal woes.
He and his former boss Pasqua are among 42 people on trial in a tangled case of alleged arms trafficking to Angola. The trial began in October and is expected to last until March

Article @ The AP

Carlos Menem Charged With Weapons Trafficking

BUENOS AIRES, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Former Argentine President Carlos Menem was charged with weapons smuggling in a trial he attended via videoconference on Friday due to health problems. Menem, 78, was allowed to attend the trial on live video in his hometown in La Rioja province due to "anemia and stress."

• He is charged with having signed presidential decrees authorizing weapons sales to Venezuela and Panama, knowing those arms would end up in Ecuador and Croatia.
• Argentina was barred from supplying Ecuador with weapons after a brief war between Ecuador and Peru in 1995, while arms embargo to Croatia was internationally observed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1995.

Apart from Menem, former Defense Minister Oscar Camilion, Menem's former brother-in-law Emir Yoma and former chief of the Air Forces Brigadier Juan Paulik, are also being tried for the same crime.

Menem's lawyer Maximiliano Rusconi denied the charges, saying that the decrees Menem signed were of legal exports to Panama and Venezuela.

• Even if the weapons ended up in Ecuador and Croatia, that was because "the presidential decree was not followed," Rusconi said.
• "What was ordered by the former President Menem was totally contrary to what happened, and the customs and military are the ones that are supposed to give explanations to the event," said the lawyer.

Meanwhile, many former army officers who are accused of the same crime said that Menem should be responsible, because by themselves they couldn't have been able to do such a big maneuver which included seven maritime and three aerial transportation from1991 to 1995.

The weapons that arrived in Ecuador and Croatia included anti-tank missiles, hand grenades, land mines and rockets, prosecutors said.

The Rest @ China View

The Italian Five Illeagle Arms Dealers May be Named

Switzerland can reveal the details of the bank accounts of five Italian citizens accused of illegal arms trafficking, a court ruled on Tuesday.

• Italian prosecutors asked Switzerland for help in a case brought against alleged black market dealers to sell arms to Libya and Iraq.
• The accused are suspected of using bank accounts in Geneva and Lugano to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Libyan officials.

The weapons affair is said to involve plans for the delivery of 500,000 Chinese-made machine guns to Libya and 150,000 guns and machine guns to Iraq.

The alleged dealers had asked the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona to block the release of their details.

The court dismissed their request on the grounds that although Swiss banking secrecy laws normally forbid the divulging of information, this does not apply where there is a strong suspicion that a crime has been committed.

The plaintiffs, who were not named by the court because of privacy rules, can appeal against the ruling to Switzerland's highest tribunal, the Federal Court.

The Rest @ SwissInfo

Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem on Trial

Former Argentine President facing arms trafficking trial

Published in: Legalbrief TodayDate: Tue 21 October 2008Category: CriminalIssue No: 2179

Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem goes on trial this week for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to smuggle weapons to Croatia and Ecuador while both countries were involved in wars.

Menem (78), a two-term president (1989-1999), faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted on all charges, according to a report on the IoL site.

The case centres around three decrees Menem signed authorising the shipment of about 6 500 tons of weapons to Panama and Venezuela, the report says. The true final destination, however, was Croatia and Ecuador. Menem publicly acknowledged signing the three decrees, but insists the transaction was legal.

This Report from Legal Briefs


Details of the weapons shipments surfaced during a judicial investigation and were made public by the prosecutors.

Menem publicly acknowledged signing the three decrees, but insists the transaction was legal because the weapons were being sent to peaceful countries.

• The weapons to Croatia were sent in seven shipments aboard freighters between 1991 and 1995.
• At the time much of the Balkans was under a United Nations arms embargo following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
• The weapons sent to Ecuador arrived aboard three flights in February 1995. At the time Ecuador was engaged in a border war with Peru, and Argentina was banned from selling weapons to either side because it was one of the guarantors of a peace agreement the two nations signed ending an earlier war in 1942.
• Prosecutors estimate that the government lost some 123 million dollars in the illegal transactions, though the amount could be higher because one attorney believes that there were further shipments previously unaccounted for.

Witnesses scheduled to testify in the case include former presidents Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989) and Fernando De la Rua (1999-2001), both from the social-democratic Radical party, court sources said.

Menem enjoys immunity from imprisonment - but not from prosecution - as senator for his birth province of La Rioja.

Any sentence he might incur would not be served until his senate term expires in 2014, unless he resigns or is fired by his peers. Menem earlier spent five months under house arrest in 2001 on charges of masterminding the arms deals, but was set free by a Supreme Court ruling.

The case against Menem was filed again after president Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) replaced all the High Court members.

Also implicated in the alleged smuggling operation are former defense ministers Oscar Camilion and the late Antonio Erman Gonzalez, late foreign minister Guido Di Tella, former air force chief Juan Paulik and a dozen lesser officials.

Full report on the IoL site

Uralwagonzavod

Uralwagonzavod is the Maker of the up coming T-95 Tank

-Editer

Uralvagonzavod (Уралвагонзавод, Dzierzhinsky Ural Railroad Car Works, "Uralsky vagonostroitelny zavod imeni F.E. Dzerzhinskogo, UVZ) is an industrial location in Nizhny Tagil, Russia. Its official designation is Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Production Association Uralvagonzavod" , or Vagonka for short.

The plant was built during 1931-1936 (mostly during the second five-year plan), launched on October 11, 1936, and named after Felix Dzerzhinsky. Initially it manufactured freight cars.
After the German invasion of 1941, Stalin ordered hundreds of factories in Ukraine and western Russia to be evacuated east. The KhPZ Factory No. 183 in Kharkiv was moved to Nizhny Tagil by rail, and merged with the Dzerzhinsky Works, to form the Stalin Ural Tank Factory No. 183. During the Great Patriotic War it became the largest producer of tanks in the world, including the T-34. After the war, tank production was scaled down, and part of the Vagonka's manufacturing and design assets were transferred back to Kharkiv's Diesel Factory No. 75 during 1945–51.

After the war it was expanded to produce machinery of other destinations: agricultural, construction, aviation, and space, including design and production of the Vostok, Voskhod, Proton and Energia expendable rockets.

It is the location of the Kartsev-Venediktov Design Bureau (OKB-520) where the T-54A and T-55 (development of Morozov's T-54), T-62, T-72, and T-90 tanks have been designed, and probably Russia's future main battle tank, rumoured to be called the T-95.

Its gradual privatization is planned, beginning in 2006.

The Rest @ Wikipedia

BeltechExport of Belorus

Export of equipment manufactured by the enterprises of the Republic of Belarus:

• automated control systems for troops, armament and communication systems;
• fire control systems for armored material; sights and night vision devices for small arms;
• off-road heavy-duty trucks and wheeled tractors; EW systems;
• simulators

Repair and upgrading of armament and military materiel.

• Supply of armament, military equipment and spare parts.
• Research engineering, development of fundamentally new armament, simulators, training centers.
• Training of personnel for Armed Forces.

The main principle of work of our Company is strict adherence to international requirements and standards in the field of military and technical cooperation and full and proper fulfillment of its commitments towards Customers and Partners.

Geography of partnership relations of our Company is sufficiently wide and spreads all over the countries of

• Africa
• Asia
• Middle East
• Latin America.

At present Beltechexport Company has its official representations in

• Vietnam
• United Arab Emirates
• Libya
• Russia
• France.

Company offers supplies of the following armament and materiel for the Land Forces:

• Towed and self-propelled artillery;
• Ammunition for small-arms and artillery systems of different caliber;
• Tanks Т-55, Т-72, Т-80 of different modifications;
• Infantry combat vehicles BMP-1, BMP-2;
• Anti-tank guided complexes;
• Small arms;
• Engineering armament and ammunition;
• Ground reconnaissance radars.

The Rest @ their website

comment by editor:

They seem to supply anyone anywhere with anything