Failed transporter who helped nab Russian arms dealer in DEA sting is jailed for five years
2012 05 26
- Details
A MAN who once used his air cargo company in South Africa to spy on the military operations of nearby countries that opposed the apartheid regime, and who later helped the US Drug Enforcement Agency to capture a Russian arms trafficker, was recently jailed for five years in a New York court, according to a report in the New York Times.
Born in Britain in 1941 and raised in South Africa and served in its air force, Andrew Smulian was caught in Bangkok in 2008, with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
The court heard that it all started when Mr Smulian's business failed and then he became ensnared in a purported arms deal with terrorists that turned out to be a sting operation by the American government; he was used unwittingly to capture the Russian arms trafficker Bout.
When he was arrested Mr Smulian decided to switch sides and over the past four years, he has co-operated with the authorities against Bout, meeting regularly with prosecutors and agents, and pleading guilty to supporting terrorism, among other charges.
Last fall, at age 70, he became the government's star witness at Bout's trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan; Bout was convicted and sentenced to 25 years.
Mr Smulian, now 71, appeared in court recently and this time for his own sentencing. Both his lawyer and the government cited his extensive cooperation. Although Mr Smulian faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years, a letter from prosecutors describing his substantial assistance allowed the judge, Shira Scheindlin, to go below that. She imposed five years, and since Mr Smulian has been held since 2008, he has less than one year to serve.
"He was simply a financially vulnerable, out-of-work" air transporter who had known Bout, the judge said in court, and he had been used as a conduit for the government to catch the man it really wanted. There was no evidence, she added, that had Mr Smulian not been approached in the sting, he would ever "have been involved with terrorism."
Mr Smulian testified that he began working for Bout in the late 1990s, helping to acquire a base in South Africa for his air-transport operation, and that he later assisted him in setting up companies in Swaziland and Zambia.
The Drug Enforcement Administration approached Mr Smulian as early as 2007, using one of his old friends who was secretly cooperating with the drug agency. Mr Smulian was asked to convey a potential arms deal to Bout and they both met in Moscow and later in Curacao and other places with other informers who posed as representatives of a Colombian terrorist group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Bout agreed to sell 100 surface-to-air missiles, machine guns, grenades and five tons of C-4 explosives, prosecutors said. He and Mr Smulian knew that the weapons would be used to kill American pilots stationed in Colombia, the evidence showed.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
The magazine SEA has been published since 1935
International business magazine JŪRA MOPE SEA has been published since 1999
The first magazine in Eurasia in the four languages: English, Chinese, Russian and Lithuanian
|
|