What did Bout Do With Weapons for Iraq?
By Douglas Farah
In one of the strangest twists of recent Bout-related events, a company in Bout's business orbit was found to have flown several hundred thousand AK-47 assault rifles from Bosnia to Iraq, theoretically for use by the new, U.S.-traine Iraqi army and police. Unfortunately, there is no record of the weapons ever actually landing in Iraq, although it appears that the now-defunct air freighter, Aerocom, did make the flights.
This was first reported in a new report by Amnesty International report and I have confirmed the basic outlines from other intelligence sources.
Aerocom shared an address and telephone number in Moldova with Jetline, a company publicly named as a Bout company by then senior Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz. But when the first the Aerocom flights were made (Aug. 7, 8, 21, 22, 2004) , the airline had lost its vital Air Operating Certificate, issued by Moldova. The AOC expired on Aug. 6, 2004 and has not been renewed.
As the AI investigation found, there is no record of the 200,000 AK-47s flown from the U.S-military controlled Eagle Base near Tuzla, Bosnia, ever actually reached Iraq. The End User Certificate were from the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority and the interim Iraqi administration. My full blog is here.
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By Douglas Farah
In one of the strangest twists of recent Bout-related events, a company in Bout’s business orbit was found to have flown several hundred thousand AK-47 assault rifles from Bosnia to Iraq,... [Read More]
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