Part of a series on Organized Crime and the Environment, by Raven
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2. PEACE AND THE ARMS TRADE

Since the 1960's, peace and disarmament have been a concern of the environmental movement typified by Greenpeace, originally a marriage or "green" and "peace". While nuclear weapons were the major focus of peace movements during the mad arms standoff of the 1970's and 80's, more attention is now shifting to the role played by conventional arms in the deaths and suffering of people world-wide.

Here are some cases of organized crime's new movement into the arena of the international arms trade:

CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS (NON-NUCLEAR)

RUSSIA/INDIA

Arianespace, The French space organization received Indian Space Search Organization (ISRO) data that was smuggled out of India by a spy ring involving the French secret service in tandem with "a section of Russian Mafia [which] has taken to mercenary sales of nuclear, space and defense related material and data after break up of the former Soviet Union."
[quote from "Moneyclips", December 13, 1994, translated abstract of article in the Riyadh Daily.]

ITALY

Leoluca Orlando, National Chairman of "La Rete", Italy's anti-mafia party, says that a new Sicilian organization called "The Star" has specialized in the illegal arms trade. This organization is alleged to have begun in 1991, made up of younger mafia types.
[source: CNN NEWS February 17, 1993 Transcript # 310 - 3 ]

In a U.S. news conference, Orlando, the former Mayor of Palermo Sicily, said that weapons sales are replacing drugs ''because it is more lucrative and less risky to sell enriched uranium to (Libyan leader Muammar) Gaddafi or Iraq's Saddam Hussein.''
[see: The Reuter Library Report February 17, 1993 ]

BULGARIA

The President of Bulgaria, in 1993, Zhelyu Zhelev reported that the neighbouring war in Yugoslavia/Bosnia had create new national crime groups within his country, to supply arms to the war. Zheleve said Bulgaria did not have the resources to fight off such organized crime.
[original source: Nachrichten TV, Berlin, in German 2030 gmt 28 Sep 94 Excerpt from recording of interview with President Zhelyu Zhelev (EE/2110 B/4 [9])]

MAFIA ARMS

"Last November, near Rimini, police officers unearthed a cache of weapons from East Europe that included antitank rocket-launchers and were said to be destined for the Mafia.

In January, scores of surface-to-surface missiles were discovered aboard a freighter in the southern Italian port of Taranto, bound for the former Yugoslavia. One month later, in the northern port of Trieste, another freighter was impounded after it was found to be carrying explosives and other weapons from the former Yugoslavia.

A smaller cache, including the potent, Czech-made explosive Semtex, was unearthed in Sicily, the mob's heartland, last April.

Over the last year, according to Interior Minister Nicola Mancino, Italian authorities have discovered 400 undefined "weapons of war," 238 bombs and missiles and 1.3 tons of explosives."
[source: The New York Times September 2, 1993 ]

UK/RUSSIA

A double-agent relic of the cold war, Brian Perry, came in from the cold by informing British intelligence about Russian mafia groups plans to use the UK as a base for international illegal arms sales. The Russian mafia used KGB and former KGB agents in their organization, according to Perry, and were interested in selling guided missles, plutonium for bombs, Sem-tex explosives for terrorists and general armaments.
[See The Observer September 11, 1994, pg 6 ]

RUSSIA

"'I want to stress that gangs obtain most of their weapons (from *military facilities run by) the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation,' Gennady Gorbunov, a police officer for the ministry's anti-organized crime department, told a press conference."
[ The Moscow Times December 7, 1994 ]

"Vladimir Miskin, an officer for the ministry's crime investigation department, said an organized crime group involved in the killing in March of Razil Musin, the deputy chairman of the Bashkir Supreme Soviet, possessed not only pistols but 36 armed air-to-surface missiles.

'A group of army officers was part of this gang and were involved in theft of weapons from the Military Aviation Academy in Ufa,' Miskin said."
[ The Moscow Times December 7, 1994 ]

See also: Frank Viviano's article on Serbia and Mafia arms, headquartered in Ksovo, Albania.

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