Neue Hinweise auf CIA Verbindungen der IS-Paris- Bataclon-Attentäter von 2015
Eine der automatischen Schusswaffen des Attentates vom 13. November 2015 in Paris ist auf einen Händler zurückgeführt worden, der bereits in den Waffenhandel der CIA, in die Iran-Contra-Affäre mit illegalen Waffen verwickelt war.
Das jedenfalls berichtete die „Palm Beach Post„, eine der großen Tageszeitung in den Vereinigten Staaten. Und die Iran-Contra —Affäre war ein bekannter und bewiesener Deal der Reagan-Regierung: Man lieferte Geld und Waffen an die rechte Guerilla-Bewegung der Contras in Nicaragua, das aus geheimen Waffengeschäften mit dem Iran stammte. Die Contras revanchierten sich mit mehreren Tonnen Kokain für die USA, bei der CIA war das bekannt, geduldet, vermittelt. Verschwörung?
Die USA wurden deshalb später vom Internationalen Gerichtshof in Den Haag wegen militärischer und paramilitärischer Aktivitäten in und gegen Nicaragua schuldig gesprochen. In einer Resolution forderte die UN-Generalversammlung die USA auf, das Gerichtsurteil anzuerkennen.
Nun wird, auch ganz zufällig, versteht sich, eine Zastava M92 bei den Pariser Terroristen gefunden, deren Seriennummer auf den Iran-Contra-Waffenhändler, die Firma „Century International Arms“ in Delray Beach, Florida, zurückzuführen ist.
Die Zastava M92 ist, wie Waffenhändler versichern, eine „sehr ordentliche Kopie“ der sowjetischen Kalaschnikow und wird gern von Spezialeinheiten benutzt. Ihr Lieferant, Michael Sucher von „Century International Arms“, schweigt sich bisher über den Weg der Waffe von Florida nach Paris aus.
Schon während der Iran-Contra-Affäre schwieg seine Firma beharrlich. Und auch als WIKILEAKS die Rolle dieser Waffenschieber-Bude enttarnte (WikiLeaks secret cables detail Delray firm’s role in arms trade), war nicht viel zu hören. Geschweige, dass die US-Behörden den Fall erneut aufrollten.
Schon 2011 berichtete Wikileaks über die Schlüsselrolle der Firma, die mit intimen Verbindungen zum US-Militär Waffen in alle Welt liefert.
So wandern Waffen made in USA zu ausländischen Militärs und von da aus zu großen internationalen Waffenhändlern wie "Century Arms".
Der CIA macht es genau wie heute im Syrienkrieg. Man beliefert nur indirekt den IS oder Terrorgruppen mit Waffen - beispielsweise über Drittstaaten oder über die Militär- und Geheimdienststrukturen dieser Drittstaaten. So kann man offiziell die Verbindung zur CIA udn zur US- Regierung nicht nachvollziehen oder beweisen und andererseits hat die US Regierung und der CIA die volle Kontrolle über die Belieferung des IS und von verbündeten Staaten bzw. deren Militärs durch Waffenhändler.
The dispatches offer rare glimpses into the shadowy world of the international arms trade. They show how guns can move from the U.S. to foreign military stockpiles, from stockpiles to dealers like Century Arms, and from dealers to buyers worldwide.
In this marketplace, Century Arms has prospered, trading in pistols, sniper rifles and assault weapons - sometimes with the help of "unauthorized brokers," according to the cables.
To carry out the Guatemala transfer, an Israeli arms dealer with a troubled past took control of at least one shipping container full of American M-1 rifles, guns the Guatemalans were forbidden to sell, and hawked them to Century Arms in 2007.
The Delray Beach company, run by the same family for 50 years, offered the weapons for general sale.
State Department officials, who declined to comment for this story, ultimately concluded that the transaction was illegal, according to the cables. An attorney for Century Arms maintains the company did nothing wrong.
Moving in shady circles
During the Cold War, the United States used its now-defunct Military Assistance Program as a way of shoring up friendly governments around the world. Between 1956 and 1989, the American government doled out what today amounts to $131.3 billion in rifles, bullets, jeeps, planes and other items, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Guatemala's share was about $130 million. The cables don't specify when the guns peddled to Century Arms were donated to Guatemala, but as "MAP-origin" weapons, they were subject to the same stringent restrictions that applied worldwide: It was illegal to trade or resell them without first getting U.S. permission.
Gun broker Ori Zoller played the middleman in the Century Arms deal. In Central America, Zoller was a savvy operator with spy-novel credentials. He served as an Israeli special forces soldier and worked as an intelligence officer before founding his gun-dealing business in Guatemala in 1996, according to an investigation by the Organization of American States.
He sometimes moved in shady circles. In January 2001, eight months before 9/11, Zoller tried to round up "arms and ammunition, including twin- and four-barrel anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank 'launchers' and small arms" for Samih Osailly, a Lebanese arms dealer with suspected ties to Al-Qaeda, the OAS found in 2003.
Century Arms has done business with Zoller for years. In 2006, the Guatemalan government came to owe Zoller a "significant debt" for arming the Guatemalan military, and the Israeli got an idea for how they could pay it back, according to a June 2008 cable, which was marked secret and not to be shared with foreign governments.
If the Guatemalans agreed to a barter deal, he would sell off their surplus military rifles to a private buyer and pocket the proceeds - if they could find a buyer.
As it turned out, that wasn't a problem. The buyer he lined up was Century Arms.
From office to ordnance
Founded in Canada in 1961, Century International Arms started out selling office equipment in Montreal. The company entered the arms trade after it bartered used typewriters for a trunk of Enfield rifles and made a tidy profit selling the guns, according to a trade publication.
Century Arms moved its headquarters to Delray Beach in 1993, but the company's owners have had ties to South Florida since the 1960s, business records show. It now leases a gray, 78,000-square foot office complex on South Congress Avenue, across the street from a Palm Beach County sheriff's substation.
Run by the Sucher family, the closely held company is reaping the benefits of a booming trade in military relics and surplus arms - especially after the 2004 sunset of a federal assault weapons ban.
Working with brokers like Zoller, Century Arms scours the world for surplus military weapons, imports and sometimes modifies them, selling them to collectors. In the past six years, it has bought or sold in the Czech Republic, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belgium, France, Israel and Australia, according to the cables.
The Guatemala deal wasn't the first time Zoller had called on Century Arms.
In 1999, he approached the Delray Beach dealer about buying Kalashnikov rifles, assault weapons he planned to pick up in a trade with the Nicaraguan military, according to the OAS investigation. Century Arms was interested, but the deal fell through.
Instead, Zoller sold 3,000 AK-47s to a middleman who routed them to the AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group whose heavily armed death squads have terrorized Colombia.
Zoller contended he was duped, but not everybody lost out. Having cut a side deal, Century Arms walked away with a shipment of 9,000 bayonets, according to the report. The company's executive vice president, Brian Sucher, signed for the weapons days before the rifles were shipped to Colombia.
'Proper procedures'
Back in Guatemala City, the State Department team sat down with Zoller and heard his side of the story.
First, Zoller said, he had insisted he would sell only to an American company, according to the cables. Otherwise, he said, he ran the risk of getting tangled up in "shady deals."
Century Arms was a natural choice . He'd been doing business with the company since 1997. But it was Century Arms officials, he continued, who should have followed the U.S. government's rules. They were the ones who produced American import papers that seemed to show authorization.
Zoller added that he had no idea he was dealing in donated, and hence off-limits, American weapons until after the transfer. And, he stressed, Century Arms packed and shipped the rifles from the Guatemalan military warehouse. Zoller never touched the guns; he just owned them on paper to get paid, he said.
When the team sat down with the Guatemalans, they heard a different story. Zoller's company, not Century Arms, had shown up at the warehouse, loaded a truck full of weapons and rumbled off, acting with little or no supervision from the military.
Still, the defense officials said, more should have gone into vetting the transaction.
They blamed "confusion over the proper procedures" and admitted that "the necessary time and care were not taken when selecting the material that was to be sold," according to the cables.
In this case, fessing up was easy for the Guatemalan department heads: They had been on the job for only three months, installed after the new president took office.
Century Arms' attorney and lobbyist, Mark Barnes, said the company did nothing wrong in making the deal. In a letter to The Post, he described the transaction as "a standard international government sale," and laid blame for any broken rules on the Guatemalan government.
"Century acted in accordance with the laws of the United States at all times and continues to pride itself on its compliance with export control regulations," Barnes wrote.
Ominous items
The Guatemala deal was just one of many Century Arms has done in the past few years. The diplomatic cables document two other transfers immediately before and after the State Department's investigation began.
In the first, Century Arms sold pistols and revolvers to a Costa Rican gun dealer, a sale in which nothing seemed out of place. In the second, the company shipped weapons to Belgium, a case that again got the State Department's attention, according to the cables. A purchase order provided by Zottegam gun dealer Podevijn Eddy Wapenhandel listed some ominous-sounding items:
" 'Booby traps,' 'unconventional warfare devices and techniques-incendiaries,' 'sniper training and employment,' and 'improvised munitions handbook.' "
Once again, as it had in Guatemala, the State Department set out to investigate.
How we got this story
Palm Beach Post staff writer Adam Playford obtained a file containing WikiLeaks archives of more than 250,000 State Department cables and wrote special software to search it.
Playford and staff writer Michael LaForgia pored over the dispatches, which detail developments in major areas of U.S. foreign policy. Thousands are marked secret.
They also include insights into how South Florida people and companies influence world events.
This story, the first in an occasional series, is based on those cables.
In Florida agierte in einer Flugschule wohl als Drogenkurierpilot der CIA auch Mohammeed Atta, der in einer Flugschule wirkte, die dem Bush-Vertrauten und Mormonenbischf Wally Hilliard gehörte.
Der US- Journalist Daniel Hopsicker hatte diese Verbindungen aufgeklärt und er hatte auch schon das Standardwerk in den USA über die Iran-Contra-Affäre und die Rolle des CIA veröffentlicht, das ebenfalls einen Drogenkurierpiloten des CIA besonders herausgearbeitet hatte.
Der genaue Weg der Waffe — von der Iran-Contra-Firma in die Hände der Paris-Attentäter — ist unbekannt. Bekannt ist die gute Zusammenarbeit eben dieses Waffenhändlers mit der CIA. Die Kalaschnikow-Kopie kann natürlich durch mehrere Hände gegangen sein. Aber ein CIA-Direktversand ist auch nicht auszuschließen. So ein Händler ist dem Profit verschworen. Die CIA schwört am liebsten Meineide. Im Interesse der jeweiligen US-Mächtigen, versteht sich.