The Arms Fixers

A major consequence of the failure to modernize the military, security and
police sectors of many poor countries has been the rapid growth of private companies that provide security services. International commercial interests, sometimes exploiting illegal or unethical opportunities, have been keen to open up profitable security businesses in outlying, conflict-prone regions of the world, where arms dealing forms part of the services provided.

Israeli Dealing in Hot Spots

In January 1999 an Israeli businessman and former officer in the Israeli Defense Force reserves, Colonel Yair Klein, was arrested in Freetown, the capital of war-torn Sierra Leone.¹ Klein was suspected of supplying and training the Sierra Leone rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) through a network based in Liberia, where Klein was allegedly involved in training an elite corps of the Liberian armed forces.²

Colombian judicial authorities soon issued a request to the Sierra Leone authorities for the extradition of Klein, for whom an arrest warrant had already been issued on 4 February 1998 by the prosecutor-general in Bogota. In Colombia, Klein and three other former Israeli military officers under his command had been charged with providing ‘instruction and training in terrorist activities³. Klein had allegedly provided paramilitary training to vigilante groups in Colombia’s Magdalena Valley region between 1987 and 1989. The trainees had later joined forces with two drug lords of the Medellin cartel.

The facts concerning Klein’s involvement in Colombia emerged in April 1989, when Jose Gonzales Rodriguez Gacha, one of the leaders of the Medellin cocaine cartel, died in a shoot-out with a joint US-Colombian law enforcement team. When searching the drug lord’s ranches, Colombian authorities discovered 178 new Gallil assault
rifles. The weapons had been manufactured in Israel and were said to be part of a shipment of 500 Uzi machine guns and 200,000 rounds of ammunition sold legitimately by the government-owned Israeli Military Industries to the government of
Antigua in autumn 1988. According to the Israeli company, it had exported the arms on the basis of a November 1988 purchase letter from Antigua’s Minister of National Security: ‘the letter had assured there would be no third-party transfer’. However, the Antiguan authorities said they had neither ordered nor received the arms for their 90-member defence force.⁴

The case caused an international scandal when it was broadcast on 21 August 1989 by American NBC News, linking a network of Israeli arms traffickers operating out of Miami to the diversion of the weapons. The traffickers included Klein, as well as an Israeli intelligence operative, Pinchas Shahar, and an Israeli businessman, Maurice Sarfati, operating out of Miami and Paris. The Antiguan authorities subsequently
uncovered evidence that the weapons were diverted to Colombia after being off-loaded from a Danish ship to another ship in an Antiguan port in April 1989. An
Israeli bank in New York had financed the deal.⁵

According to a US Senate Committee investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) affair, the ‘Antigua project had been the outgrowth for the establishment of a "melon farm" by Sarfati in Antigua in 1983, financed by the United States government through a $2 million dollar loan’. BCCI had provided the necessary references for Sarfati to obtain a loan, claiming he was ‘one of our valued customers’.⁶ The files on Sarfati, according to the bank’s lawyers, were ‘missing’.⁷

When the Colombian authorities first revealed Klein’s involvement in the training of the drug cartel’s private armies and issued an arrest warrant for him, the Israeli mercenary had already left the country and was back in Israel, continuing to run his private defence company, Hod Hadanit (‘spearhead’). Klein claimed that he had thought his trainees were ranchers in Colombia who wanted to defend themselves against leftist guerrillas.⁸

On 29 November 1990, an Israeli court sentenced Klein after he pleaded guilty on three charges: negotiating to sell military equipment without a license, the actual sale of expertise, and the unlawful sale of equipment to a group called the ‘Farmers
Organization’.⁹ As far as the Colombian authorities were concerned, Klein remained a fugitive, and in February 1998 the Colombian prosecutor-general charged him in
absentia with training terrorist groups. Klein’s trainees and the weapons from the
Antigua deal were allegedly deployed in the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan and in the explosion of a Colombian airliner that crashed in
November 1989.¹⁰ Klein was also involved in setting up an illegal anti-terror combat training school in Antigua. It is not clear whether Klein’s mercenary activities in
Colombia coincided with those of a group of British mercenaries who had allegedly trained paramilitary squads for the cocaine cartels.¹¹

It is thought unlikely that Sierra Leone will extradite Klein to Colombia. He is being charged in Sierra Leone for smuggling arms from Ukraine and Liberia into the
country, according to Sierra Leone’s Attorney General. Klein originally denied any involvement in the smuggling. It is reported that Israel’s foreign ministry was
continuing diplomatic efforts to bring about his release.¹²

London Brokers for Arms and Mercenaries

On 28 March 1997 Australian air force jets intercepted a cargo plane in the airspace between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. Sydney-based newspapers said the Antonov AN-124 aircraft that was grounded in Australia had been carrying several attack helicopters, military vehicles, and an arsenal of weapons, including heat-seeking missiles, grenades, 500 cases of ammunition, explosives and rockets.¹³

The weapons were on their way to Papua New Guinea, for use by a foreign private military company – Executive Outcomes – hired to quell a secessionist rebellion on the Isle of Bougainville. This South African company was represented in Papua New Guinea by the British-based consultants Sandline International. However, the operation backfired after mutinous army units and protesting civilians opposed the use of mercenaries in the country, and the contract was suspended. The director of Sandline, former British colonel Tim Spicer, had to appear before a Commission of Inquiry in Papua New Guinea that probed the terms of the contract between the PNG government and Sandline.

From the Commission’s hearings, it is understood that the PNG government had been requesting attack helicopters and other lethal equipment from its usual channels in Britain, Australia and the USA. But the poor human-rights record of the PNG-armed forces meant that only ‘non-lethal’ and transport helicopters could be supplied. The PNG government then decided to sign a contract with Sandline International in January 1997. This contract, worth $36 million, comprised the supply of four helicopters, two Mi-17 armed transport helicopters and two Mi-24 helicopter gunships. It was
reported that one of the companies in the chain of suppliers for the Eastern European-produced helicopters was the London-based Triton Sal. The brokering company was reportedly run by a Russian businessman.¹⁴

According to the minutes of the hearings of the Commission of Inquiry, Spicer testified that the end-user certificates were signed on 27 January 1997.¹⁵ This was done by the chief of staff of the PNG armed forces and by the chief of logistics of the armed forces. These certificates covered the legal purchase of the helicopters and other equipment included in the contract. The documents were turned over to the Commission of Inquiry as evidence. Two of the certificates were addressed to Triton Sal. ‘It is a company with an office in London, one of the companies we use to procure military equipment’, replied Sandline’s director when questioned about the nature of Triton Sal.¹⁶ The end-user certificates referred to three of the four helicopters involved. ‘The way that we work is that we give Triton or another company the task of sourcing the helicopters. I believe these helicopters came in fact from Belarus’, said Spicer,
according to the Commission’s transcripts.

Brigadier General Singirok of the PNG armed forces was suspended after he had
organized the mutiny against the contract with Sandline International. He was also called as a witness before the Commission of Inquiry and confirmed Spicer’s evidence on the end-user certificates and the purchasing of the helicopters.¹⁷ The suspended commander acknowledged that he had signed the certificates three days before the PNG government had authorized the contract with Sandline International. He explained that he had handed over five blank end-user certificates to Sandline. According to copies provided to the Commission, these were dated 1 February 1997. It seems, from the evidence of both Singirok and Spicer, that one of these blank end-user certificates from Papua New Guinea was eventually filled out by the Sandline representatives in London and addressed to its supplier company, Triton Sal.¹⁸ The latter company was reported to be selling or brokering the sale of former Soviet surplus equipment purchased in Belarus, apparently for sale at high prices to governments of developing countries.

In April 1997, coinciding with the sessions of the Commission of Inquiry in Papua New Guinea, the Ugandan government signed a purchasing arrangement for four similar helicopter gunships from Belarus.¹⁹ The four helicopters were to be supplied by a UK-based company called Consolidated Sales Corporation (CSC), registered in the Virgin Islands.

However, when the initial batch of two helicopters arrived at Kampala airport, the ‘items delivered did not conform to the specifications of the contract’. A first official report by the deputy director of Military Intelligence of Uganda established that the helicopters had not been overhauled, as required in the contract between the Ugandan government and CSC. Logbooks purporting to show the technical history of the
second-hand helicopters were also questioned.²⁰ According to British aviation authorities, the helicopters should have cost no more than $700,000 each, whereas the
contract price of the helicopter gunships was $1.5 million per helicopter.²¹

CSC rejected the report of the Ugandan official investigation, which led to the
appointment of a second independent assessor. It was mutually agreed that the assessor be a helicopter company from South Africa, whose findings would bind both
parties. After the independent assessor deemed the helicopters not airworthy, the Ugandan Defence Ministry released a press statement announcing that the agreement with CSC was terminated.²²

But Uganda had already paid half the price of the contract in the form of promissory notes that had been cashed by the selling company. Each of the four helicopters cost $1.5 million, but apparently the sum of $12 million had been agreed upon in an
arrangement between the brokers of CSC and several highly placed Ugandan officials and businessmen. This would have been almost four times the price the gunships should have cost, given their condition, according to the aviation experts from South Africa and Britain. The purchasing price for the ineffective equipment raised a heated debate in Uganda’s Parliament, which requested greater transparency about the
defence expenditure of the country.²³ On 11 February 1999 a motion to set up a select committee to probe allegations of corruption in the procurement of military equipment was rejected, although it was reported that several senior officers had already confessed to taking bribes in the deal. The Ugandan president then directed a new probe into the helicopter purchase agreement.²⁴

The report of the South African helicopter experts showed that the Ugandan government had used a middleman to purchase the helicopters because, at the time, it had no direct contract with the military authorities of the Commonwealth of Independent States or industries with a mandate to sell the helicopters. According to the report, the proprietor of CSC was Emmanuel Katto. Chris Smith, a British public-relations consultant who referred to himself as director of CSC, was reported to have carried out the negotiations with the Ugandan Army. CSC had reportedly bought the helicopters from or via Triton Sal.²⁵

The helicopters had not been ordered for Uganda alone. After a Kampala-based newspaper had published a story on Rwandan complaints about the overpriced chopper deal, officials in the Rwandan capital reacted and acknowledged that two of the four contracted helicopters were for their country. As an official put it, it was difficult for Rwanda to acquire military items directly on the international arms market, so ‘the country had to turn to its friends in neighbouring countries’.²⁶

What really happened with the pricing and the delivery of the helicopters to Uganda and Rwanda remains unclear. Not only did the surplus deals involve equipment of questionable quality, but it seems that the big profits made by the various brokering agents and companies were split between businessmen and high officials in Uganda and London, at the expense of the Ugandan and Rwandan taxpayers. A Ugandan newspaper published a detailed report claiming that the Rwandan part of the deal
involved a complex network of arms companies in Belarus, brokers in the UK and Uganda, a Russian arms dealer, an offshore company in the Virgin Islands, bank
accounts in London and New York, and a money guarantee by a bank that no longer
existed.²⁷

Mercenary Air Power

In 1998, a pilot who sub-contracted to fly cargo planes for various companies talked about flying aircraft for Capricorn Airlines, part of the Executive Outcomes and
Sandline group.²⁸ He said, however, that he had been ignorant of the identities of the ultimate buyers and sellers:

Since 1994…I would estimate I have done at least fifty flights for them.. … All these shipments consisted of arms, mainly rifles and ammunition but, on a couple of occasions, landmines. … In my time I have smuggled many diverse cargoes including arms, diamonds and wild birds. I am still engaged in this work. I have, however, never carried drugs on moral grounds.²⁹

The exactorigin of ‘Capricorn Airlines’ is unclear. Colonel David Stirling, the
founder of the British Special Air Service (SAS) as well as various private security ventures in Africa, also funded the Capricorn Africa Society in the 1950s.³⁰ In the late 1980s, Stirling was linked to the private security company, KAS Enterprises Ltd, which reportedly employed former SAS personnel and others on the borders of south-eastern Angola to counter ivory hunting and other illegal activities.³¹ This was only possible by obtaining the cooperation of the then-apartheid armed forces in the area, especially the Buffalo Battalion and ‘Reccie’ units, as well as the Angolan rebel movement, UNITA. The interaction of these forces formed the backdrop to the formation of Executive Outcomes in South Africa in 1989, enabling alliances on private
security projects between former South African and British special force officers.³² Executive Outcomes was registered in the UK in September 1993. ‘Capricorn Systems’ emerged as a company within the Executive Outcomes group, although it was sometimes called ‘Capricorn Air’.³³ In April 1995, two Andover transport planes were sold from the Royal Air Force’s Queen’s Flight to a broking firm, Technical Aviation, which registered them in Sierra Leone and Angola and leased them to Executive Outcomes.³⁴ By 1995 all the companies within this group had come under the overarching control of Strategic Resource Corporation in South Africa and a group of companies based in the UK and offshore tax havens. The group was largely controlled by UK mining magnate and former SAS officer, Tony Buckingham.³⁵ In 1996, the main British directors of these companies formed Sandline International to work with
Executive Outcomes, and registered it in the Bahamas with shared offices in Chelsea, London.³⁶

In November 1996, as the war to topple the dictator Mobutu in former Zaire began to spread, a businessman who had represented Ibis Air wrote to the commercial director of the Chelsea group office, using the letterhead of a UK company, Techline Aviation Ltd. He explained the advantages of sourcing ex-Soviet military equipment outside Russia:

In addition I can supply up to twenty factory new 1992-1993 Mi-17s ex Russia at prices between $850K and $950K but they will be subject to export formalities from Russia. …The military equipment must be sourced from Russia. I have investigated the ex East German Mi-24V helicopters but they have been sold. …Prices for the new Mi-24W including all your specified ‘accessories’ has been quoted to me at $4.25 million each, complete ex-Russia. Once again, I am confident the prices can be negotiated down. We will need end user certificates for all equipment if purchased from Russia. No end user certificates required for the Mi-17s I have quoted for.³⁷

The fact that the European Union had imposed a ‘full scope’ arms embargo on Mobutu’s Zaire since April 1993 was of no consequence to the arms broker, since the UK company at Stansted Airport operating the giant Antonov 124 cargo plane (itself leased from one of three firms in the Russian Republic) would pick up the military helicopters in Prague and deliver them to Kinshasa without bringing the cargo into the European Union and thus without breaking UK arms control law. The man from Techline Aviation explained:

It is possible to load four Mi-17s with rotor and rotor hub removed in the AN123 [Antonov 124] or six if the tail boom is also removed. I have talked to the same transport carrier we use before and the price using Stansted – Prague –Kinshasa – Stansted for the exercise will be in the order of $210,000 all-inclusive but excluding cargo insurance. The carrier would ideally like 10 days notice. …In the process of investigating the availability of the military equipment, I have been offered other smaller hardware that I know is used by the organisation that may be of interest.³⁸

A company called Techline Resources Ltd was reported to operate aircraft from
Cyprus and southern England with Ibis Air of Malta.³⁹ ‘Capricorn Systems’ became ‘Ibis Air’ in 1997, a change of name and a de-registration from the US to the Angolan register that was said to have happened ‘within twenty four hours’ of the Civil Aviation Authority in South Africa approaching the US Federal Aviation Authority to enquire about the operations of the two US-registered Boeings used by Capricorn.⁴⁰

Ibis Air International had its principal office on Guernsey; it was registered in the
Bahamas under the name of Capricorn Systems, with branches in London, Malta, Johannesburg, Luanda, Freetown and Nairobi.⁴¹ Exactly what its large fleet of at least 17 aircraft were doing is unclear. A South African engineer and his wife who worked at Wilson airport in Kenya during 1996 for Simba Air, a company leasing aircraft from Ibis Air, showed a UK television company the illegal aircraft registration stickers that they were asked to make, alleging they had had their passports taken away after questioning the company’s links to Executive Outcomes. ⁴²

Sandline International has sometimes chartered independent air-cargo carriers to ferry arms and equipment for its operations. In May 1998, UK Customs and Excise officials investigated the role of Skyair Cargo in a $10 million sanctions-busting arms shipment arranged by Sandline. This was part of a plan to topple the military junta and restore the elected government of Sierra Leone.

Although run from offices in west London, Sky Air’s aging Liberian-registered Boeing 707 aircraft was based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. It was from there that it flew to collect the arms at a military airport in Bulgaria. On 21 February the plane took the cargo to Kano in northern Nigeria. The next day it flew on to Lunghi in Sierra Leone, where the arms were handed over to the Nigerian forces fighting the military junta that had overthrown Kabbah. Sandline mercenaries were assisting the Nigerians as well as training and supplying a local pro-Kabbah militia.⁴³

Skyair Cargo claimed it had provided customs with documents proving the flight was legal despite the mandatory United Nations arms embargo. It even claimed it was
unaware of the nature of the cargo.⁴⁴ Skyair Cargo is mentioned in several reports in 1998 and 1999 for alleged arms trafficking.⁴⁵ The company was formed in 1988 when it took over an old Boeing 707 aircraft from Santa Lucia Airways. The plane was registered as J6-SLF on the island of Saint Lucia, and Sky re-registered it as EL-JNS in Liberia. The company used to base the plane at Oostend, but moved it in January 1998 to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Santa Lucia had also operated the plane from Oostend but left there in May 1988 when it was implicated in arms deliveries as part of the Iran-Contra affair.⁴⁶ The Skyair Cargo plane has been managed from London by Skyair Cargo Services with corporate links to Tehran and East and Central Africa. Skyair Cargo has been advertised ‘to operate regular charters from Ostend to Kinshasa and Nairobi, as well as ad hoc charters’.

¹    Ha`aretz, 7 January 1999. Confirmed by Israeli foreign ministry in ‘Israeli Arms Merchant
Reported Arrested in Sierra Leone’, AFP, 15 January 1999. See also: James Rupert, ‘Diamond Hunters Fuel Africa’s Brutal Wars’, Washington Post, 16 October 1999.
²    ‘Las andanzas del israeli Yair Klein por Africa’, EI Espectador, 24 January 1999.
³    ‘Klein si cayo en Sierra Leone. Bogota’, El Espectador, 23 January 1999. See also: ‘Ex-Israeli Officers Accused of "Terrorism" in Colombia’, Reuters, 25 February 1998.
⁴    ‘Israeli Uzis Diverted into Hands of Drug Lord’, New York Times News Service, 6 May 1990.
⁵    Ibid.; Senator John Kerry & Senator Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1992, 102nd Congress, Section 4.
⁶    Senators Kerry & Brown, The BCCI Affair.
⁷    Ibid.
⁸    ‘Israeli Army Officer Convicted of Exporting Weapons, Expertise’, Associated Press,
29 November 1990.
⁹    Ibid.
¹⁰    Senators Kerry and Brown, The BCCI Affair.
¹¹    Sam Seibert et al., ‘Have Assault Rifle, Will Travel’, Newsweek, 2 October 1989.
¹²    ‘Sierra Leone to Try Israeli for Gun Running’, Reuters, 19 February 1999. The article quotes the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot , 28 January 1999; ‘Consul Visits Israeli Jailed in Africa’, Ha’aretz, 19 March 1999.
¹³    ‘Australian Jets Intercept Plane Carrying Mercenaries’ Weapons’, Associated Press, 28 March 1997; Mary-Louise O’Callahan, The Weekend Australian, 22 February 1997, writes that ‘two Russian built aircraft, flying under the Bulgarian flag of Air Sofia, had indeed arrived in Port Moresby under the cover of darkness. One of the aircraft and its Russian crew had been carrying foreign operatives and sophisticated military equipment to the provincial PNG town of Wewak, where the mercenaries were understood to be training.’ A report in the Canberra Times said the activities of the Antonov planes between Port Moresby’s Jackson Airport and Wewak had been confirmed. Ian Davies et al., ‘PNG Mercenary Move Risks $320m Aid’, The Canberra Times, 24 February 1997.
¹⁴    ‘Rwanda Chopper Deal Hatched in the UK’, New Vision, 24 January 1999.
¹⁵    Commission of Inquiry into the Engagement of Sandline International, The Honourable Justice Andrew, Commissioner at Waigani, Monday 7 April 1997, Transcript of Proceedings, National Judicial Staff Services, Supreme Court, Boroko, Papua New Guinea.
¹⁶    Ibid.
¹⁷    Commission of Inquiry, 8 April 1997.
¹⁸    Commission of Inquiry, 7 April 1997.
¹⁹    ‘Gunships Came After Defence Said "No"’, The Monitor, 6 July 1998.
²⁰    Ibid.
²¹    ‘Museveni Takes Over Copter Probe’, The East African, 19–25 March 1999.
²²    Andrew M. Mwenda, ‘Army Cancels Chopper Deal’, The Monitor, 30 September 1998.
²³    ‘Defence Budget Splits the House’, New Vision, 10 February 1999.
²⁴    ‘Museveni Orders Helicopter Probe’, New Vision, 11 February 1999.
²⁵    The East African, 19–25 March 1999. Triton Sal reportedly purchased the helicopter gunships from another Belorussian go-between company, Belspetsvnetechnica, which acted as an agent for the producer, Mil Bureau.
²⁶    ‘Rwanda Denies Blaming Uganda on Choppers’, New Vision, 18 May 1999.
²⁷    New Vision, 24 January 1999.
²⁸    On Executive Outcomes and Sandline, see Bartholomaus Grill & Caroline Dumay, ‘The Mercenary Company’, Die Zeit, 17 January 1997; Khareen Pech, ‘Executive Outcomes – A Corporate Conquest’, in J. Cilliers & P. Mason, eds, Peace Profit or Plunder?, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, and Canadian Council for International Peace Research, Ottawa, 1999; Ivor Powell ‘Labour Court May Unravel Executive Outcomes’, Daily Mail and Guardian, 12 April 1999; Journeyman Pictures, ‘The War Business’, broadcast on UK Channel Four Television, 9 April 1998.
²⁹    Interviews with pilot, by Journeyman Pictures and others, 1998.
³⁰    The Capricorn Declarations (1952) were considered the society’s first public statement. These were a political programme for a non-nationalist and non-communist colonial Africa, but less radical than apartheid or the racial strife that other white politicians were promoting.
³¹    Commission of Inquiry into the Alleged Smuggling of and Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhinoceros Horn in South Africa, Report of the Chairman Mr Justice ME Kumleben, Judge of Appeal, South Africa, January 1996. Also, in January 1997, the confidential Steyn Report to the South African government looked at the activities of KAS Enterprises.
³²    Journeyman Pictures, ‘The War Business’, 9 April 1998. This television documentary includes some of the testimony of Colonel Jan Breytenbach, the founder of South Africa’s elite reconnaissance unit – ‘the Reccies’ – that were modelled on the British SAS.
³³    The UK Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, Nigel Williams, wrote to the UN Special Rapporteur on Mercenarism on 31 January 1996 concerning the activities of Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leonne, listing Capricorn Air and Ibis Airline, amongst other companies, as ‘affiliated’ to Executive Outcomes. He pointed out that
Executive Outcomes had a UK office in Alton, Hampshire.
³⁴    ‘Low Flying’, Africa Confidential, 15 March 1996.
³⁵    Pech, ‘Executive Outcomes…’, in Cilliers & Mason. Grill and Dumay reported that Strategic Resource Corporation had ‘teamed up’ with about 50 companies and operated or had contacts in at least 34 countries (Die Zeit 17 January 1997). See also Sean Cleary, ‘Angola: A Case Study of Private Military Involvement’, in Cilliers & Mason.
³⁶    Pech, ‘Executive Outcomes…’; Grill & Dumay in Die Zeit.
³⁷    Letter from Paddy McKay of Techline Aviation Ltd, Suffolk, to Michael Grunberg, 6 November 1996. Previous group company correspondence in 1996 mentions the relationship of McKay and Grunberg to Ibis Air. It is not known whether the helicopters were actually bought and delivered through this arrangement; the purpose here is to show the methods used by arms brokering and transport agents.
³⁸    Ibid. For such a flight to take place, it would normally require other sub-contractors, particularly those who arrange the purchase of international overflight permissions. As noted, the sub-leasing of such permissions, which means that one air carrier can use another carrier’s call sign, is one method that has been used to obfuscate arms deliveries.
³⁹    ‘Ibis Air named its clients as the governments of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola and Sudan, as well as EO, Sandline International and Renamo, the Mozambican opposition party and former rebel army and advertised its helicopter and fixed-wing expertise in the bis/Techline website in 1998 at www.inter.plane.com/techline/prod02.htm.’ (Pech, ‘Executive Outcomes…’.)
40Quote from an aviation inspector in South Africa, at the airport where Ibis Air used to come for maintenance.
⁴¹    Grill & Dumay in Die Zeit.
⁴²    Film of one false sticker was shown by Journeyman Pictures, ‘The War Business’. The close company relationship between Simba Air and Ibis Air at that time is recorded in correspondence.
⁴³    Michael Gillard, Patrick Wintour & David Connet, ‘Second British Firm Caught in Foreign
Office Arms Web’, The Observer, 10 May 1998.
⁴⁴    Ibid.
⁴⁵    ‘British Firm Investigated over Links to Angolan Arms Trade’, AFP, London, 31 January 1999. See also: David Leppard, Chris Hastings, Carey Scott & Brian Johnson-Thomas, ‘British Firms Arming Sierra Leone Rebels’, The Sunday Times, 10 January 1999; Mark Honigsbaum, Anthony Barnett & Brian Johnson-Thomas, ‘British Pilot Flies Arms to Sudan’, The Observer, 14 March 1999.
⁴⁶    A Belgian Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry into the Iran-Contra affair was established on 12 May 1987, but by the time the Commission was installed, Santa Lucia had already left. The Commission’s report, released on 28 February 1989, contained evidence that a Boeing 707 operated by Santa Lucia was linked to an illicit shipment of weapons to Israel for trans-shipment to Iran. Officials had witnessed events at the Brussels and Oostend airports. The invoice of a company called Scandinavian Commodity AB, dated 16 July 1985 and made out to Santa Lucia Airways, mentions a flight schedule from Brussels Airport to Teheran Airport for a shipment of ‘dynamite’. Such cargoes were embargoed at the time.
⁴⁷    World Airline Directory 1995–1998, JP Airline Fleets International, 1999–2000 edition.