From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Jun 30 2010 - 09:32:17 EDT
Israeli indicted in U.S. for smuggling arms to Somalia
By Barak Ravid <http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/barak-ravid-1.325> and
Yossi <http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/yossi-melman-1.667> Melman
Wed, June 30, 2010
Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry sources adamantly denied yesterday
that they were in any way involved in arms shipments to Somalia.
Spokesmen for both ministries were responding to news of the arrest in the
U.S. of Hanoch Miller, an Israeli arms merchant, for allegedly illegal arms
sales to Somalia, forging documents, money laundering and violating the UN
arms embargo on Somalia.
A Defense Ministry spokesman said there is a ban on arms sales to Somalia
and Miller did not have permission to sell arms there, and even if he had
asked in Israel he would not have received such permission.
According to the charges brought against Miller at a Florida district court,
he was arrested with an unnamed American partner for alleged involvement in
the sale of hundreds of AK-47s to the government of Somaliland, a breakaway
district in Somalia since 1991. Miller and his American partner allegedly
organized arms shipments, which apparently included arms bought in Bosnia,
and had planned to fly them from there in cargo planes to Somalia. The
indictment also mentions a shipment that was sent from Panama.
The suspect allegedly presented "end user" documents of the defense ministry
of Chad. Arms shipments to that African country are not forbidden.
The two were arrested in a sting operation of the U.S. Customs, when one of
their contact persons, whose help they sought in organizing the air
shipments, turned out to be an undercover Customs agent.
Miller, 53, is an aerospace engineer who served in the Israel Air Force in a
unit that designed aircraft. He left the military with the rank of major and
worked for a short while in the Israel Aircraft Industries. With two
partners he set up Radom Aviation Systems, a company that dealt with the
upgrading of aircraft, mostly in the installation of avionics. The company
functioned in line with licenses issued by the Defense Ministry, and at
times served as a subcontractor for IAI.
One of the last deals of Radom in which Miller was involved was with Chad.
The company upgraded Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopters as well as Swiss-made,
propeller-driven Pilatus aircraft, used for training but also as combat
aircraft against rebels in the country. The deal was valued at $10 million.
Three years ago Miller left Radom and established an independent firm in
Yehud, which he said worked on electronic warfare and night vision
equipment, but it now appears that he was also involved in firearms.
Even though the indictment does not mention him by name, Joseph O'Toole, a
former colonel in the U.S. Army who was arrested in the 1980s for allegedly
illegally selling arms to Iran along with Israeli Ari Ben-Menashe, is
mentioned in the case. In 1991, O'Toole was exonerated of suspicions against
him. Ben-Menashe left Israel and now lives in Canada, having falsely claimed
for years that he was a secret adviser of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
Attempts to get a response for this article from Miller failed, and his
office assistant disconnected the telephone and refuses to give details on
his whereabouts.
The strategic location of the breakaway territory, which borders on the Gulf
of Aden and the sea routes of the Indian Ocean from Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen and through the Red Sea, have always been important for Israel's
geo-strategic interests. In the past Israel has shown great interest in the
countries of the Horn of Africa, and the Mossad had secret links with some
countries there.
The significance of the region has become all the more important because of
the growing presence of Islamic fundamentalists there, and because it is
used as a transit point for the shipments of arms to Hamas, as well as for
the training of terrorists.
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