Cops Stumble Over Colombian Rebel Drugs- For- Guns Pipeline

by Abraham Lama

The characters include a mercenary Ukrainian aviator working for the Russian drug-trafficking mafia, Peruvian army officers, naturalized French-Spanish and French-American citizens, an alleged Lebanese arms-dealer, Sarkis Soghanalian -- and even circus animals.

Among the Peruvians implicated in the scandal are a retired lieutenant who claims to have belonged to the military intelligence service, a supposed general who the government says does not exist, and two active-duty non-commissioned officers behind bars who swear that they were led to believe they were working on an undercover army operation.

And according to the Jordanian government, a United States government official is also implicated in the case.

Local newspaper reports say the first operation carried out by the band of arms-runners -- the dismantling of which was reported in late August as the result of a cooperative effort between Peru, Colombia and Jordan -- was to set up an air transport service for a Russian circus.

Along with the bears, clown suits and tight ropes, tons of cocaine were reportedly flown out of the country, with which the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) paid for 10,000 Russian AK-47 assault rifles and ammunition.

"The case was handled very poorly by President Alberto Fujimori," said sociologist Alberto Adrianzen, an analyst with the local non-governmental organization Desco. "After he denounced it, the scandal blew up in his face, and ended up smearing him as well.

"The funny thing is that Fujimori appeared to have delayed the announcement in order to exploit it on the international stage by making it coincide with the start of the 'democratization' talks with the opposition promoted by the Organization of American States," he added.

On that occasion, the opposition protested that the announcement was a smokescreen designed to downplay the talks on the reforms demanded by the OAS to shore up democracy in Peru after Fujimori's widely-questioned re-election. "This is an old piece of news, an investigation carried out last year," former diplomat Juan Mariategui said at the time.

But "since the Jordanians claim the weapons were delivered to a Peruvian army general, Fujimori went from accuser to suspect, coming under suspicion at least of being unable to clamp down on corruption among the high military command," said Adrianzen.

"We agreed to get to the bottom of the question, to find out what had happened, and where the weapons had come from," said Pastrana.

The scandal initially broke out on Aug 21, when Fujimori announced that his intelligence service had dismantled a band of arms-runners who bought 10,000 Russian Kalashnikovs in Amman, Jordan as part of an alleged purchase by the Peruvian army, and airdropped them to the FARC -- who reportedly paid for the weapons in cocaine -- in southern Colombia.

According to the president, the plane transporting the guns made layovers in Spain's Canary Islands, Guyana, and Iquitos in the Peruvian jungle. But on the way from Guyana to Peru, the weapons were supposedly airdropped over Colombian territory.

Fujimori reported that the National Intelligence Service had detected a Russian plane on Mar 17, 1999 in the airport of Iquitos, which had flown in empty under the pretext that it was picking up wood to export to Jordan.

Suspicions were raised, and the plane was searched, although no traces of cocaine were discovered. The investigators found, however, that the plane had made a similar flight in December 1998.

While they remained the object of a quiet investigation, the arms-runners made three more flights, on Jun 5, Jul 21 and Aug 3, 1999, air-dropping a total of 10,000 assault rifles as well as munitions in areas of the Colombian jungle controlled by the FARC.

The 11 members of the arms-dealing gang who were in Peru last August were arrested, while the rest are still being sought by INTERPOL.

Bogota's initial reaction was to point out that Fujimori's announcement was nothing new, because Colombia's intelligence services had already discovered the arms-running operation.

But the Pastrana administration asked Lima for explanations when Jordan claimed the assault rifles were sold to the Peruvian armed forces as part of a legal business deal.

The Colombian Embassy in Egypt reported to Pastrana that the sale had indeed been legal, and that Jordan had included the proceeds from the sale in its budget this year. The embassy recommended that the investigation determine the origin of the money used to pay for the arms.

For its part, the government of Jordan said the head of its armed forces, Abdel Al Hafez, Peruvian general Lucio Olivera, and a representative of the U.S. government had all taken part in the deal.

Fujimori, meanwhile, said the operation was carried out by traffickers who showed false documents, passing themselves off as Peruvian military officers. He also claimed there was no army general named Olivera.

The principal suspects so far are two brothers, Jose and Frank Aybar, the heads of a local company that has provided the Peruvian army with supplies for years.

According to the details of the investigation published by the local press in Lima, the Aybars were also involved in trafficking cocaine, through which they had ties to the FARC.

The two non-commissioned officers in custody -- an armorer and a paratrooper instructor -- testified that they travelled to Amman to check the guns, oversee the shipment and air-drop the weapons in the jungle.

They told the judge that they believed it was an undercover job for the army, and that they were dropping the weapons in Peruvian territory.

"They told us that the operation had to be carried out this way, undercover, for security reasons, in order not to hinder the peace talks with Ecuador" (that put an end to a long-running border dispute), one of them said.

Colombia believes the route through Peru is not the only one used by arms-runners supplying the FARC.

It was reported on Colombian TV that the weapons purchased by the rebel group entered the country through 21 spots along the border with Venezuela, 10 along the Ecuadorean border, 37 on the border with Panama and 14 along the Brazilian border. The weapons smuggled to the guerrillas were said to be of Russian, Korean, German and Polish make.

In the past two years, Colombian security forces have confiscated 30,000 long-range weapons, 300 tons of explosives, and more than five million munitions going to the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second-largest insurgent group.