MISSILE ARREST FISHY

It sounded, at first, like a big break in the anti-​​terror fight: a British man, arrested in Newark for try­ing to sell a shoulder-​​fired, Russian SA-​​18 surafce-​​to-​​air mis­sile.
But the arrest is not what it seems, Slate says.

The key fig­ure in the plot never got his hands on a live mis­sile. Instead, under­cover police posed as both sell­ers of the mis­siles and as the intended final buy­ers: After the FBI heard from an infor­mant that an aspir­ing arms dealer was try­ing to get ahold of Russian mis­siles and sell them to AQ (Al-​​Qaeda), the feds arranged to have Russian police sell the guy a dis­armed mis­sile. The mis­sile was then shipped to the U.S, “with help from the fed­eral author­i­ties.” At that point, feds pos­ing as AQ oper­a­tives bought the dummy mis­sile from the guy, then cuffed him. 

THERE’S MORE: The missile-​​selling sus­pect, Hemant Lakhani, is being held with­out bail. He’s been charged with “pro­vid­ing mate­r­ial sup­port to ter­ror­ists and of act­ing as an arms bro­ker with­out a license,” accord­ing to the Times.

August 13th, 2003 | Missiles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.