Comrades in arms: meet the former Soviet mobsters who sell terrorists their guns.

• Author: Silverstein, Ken
• Position: Arms trade - Related article: The Taliban's Favorite Gunrunner - Related article: The CIA's Favorite Gunrunner

THERE IS NOTHING REMARKABLE about Cinisello Balsamo, a working-class town in Northern Italy just outside Milan. No famous churches or ruins. No great bars or restaurants. Tourists seldom visit. The rich do not go there to see or be seen. All of which was fine with Leonid Minin; the shadowy, Ukranian-born Israeli millionaire wasn't looking for attention. During his frequent visits to Cinisello Balsamo, Minin liked to stay at the equally anonymous Hotel Europa, across the street from the town's main cathedral, where $75 can get you a double room and the privacy to do what you want. Which is what Minin was doing until the wee hours of August 5, 2000, when police, acting on a tip, barged into Room 341 and found Minin surrounded by four naked prostitutes, 58 grams of cocaine and half a million dollars worth of diamonds.

A further search turned up a green briefcase stuffed with some 1,500 documents in English, Russian, Dutch, and French. Months later, after translating and reviewing the documents, Italian law enforcement authorities discovered that they had stumbled upon an international arms dealer. Minin, they say, had been running guns from Eastern Europe to the regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia and to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a vicious guerrilla group in neighboring Sierra Leone--both of which are banned from receiving weapons under a United Nations arms embargo. Now Minin is in jail awaiting trial on arms-trafficking charges. If convicted--the trial is expected to get underway as early as this spring--he faces up to 12 years in prison.

The paper trail seized by the police offers a rare glimpse into the new and usually opaque world of post-Cold-War international arms brokers. It shows how a new generation of black market suppliers have helped turn the former Soviet bloc into a weapons warehouse for outlaw regimes, insurgencies, and terrorist groups.

In late 1997 and early 1998, planes laden with arms departed from the Ukraine and flew to Peshawar in Pakistan. From there, the materiel was trucked to the Taliban government in Kabul. During the 1990s, Iraq and Yugoslavia bought tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons with the help of black market suppliers based in Eastern Europe, despite being the objects of U.N. embargoes at the time. And while it's difficult to trace back weapons shipments to their original supplier, U.S. government officials believe that black market arms find their way to weapons bazaars in places like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen, and from there are bought by terrorist groups.

The primary destination of most of the illicit small arms is Africa, where eleven major conflicts (involving 32 countries) have erupted during the past decade. Among the bloodiest are those in Liberia and Sierra Leone, where tens of thousands of people have been killed, half a million have become refugees, and as many as two million have been displaced.

Italian authorities suspect that Minin may have ties to a number of other Eastern European gunrunners who have been arrested in their country over the past few years. "It's important to stop this now because otherwise the problem could explode here," says Walter Mapelli, the prosecutor who is preparing the case against Minin.

The Italians aren't the only ones worried about the likes of Minin. U.S. officials and security experts say that the small-arms trade fuels the growing instability that breeds and harbors terrorism. "The chaos that exists in parts of Africa has created a black hole where terrorists can come and go and conceal their activities," says an administration official who requested anonymity. His views are echoed by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Africa Subcommittee. At a hearing on Nov. 16, he charged that international terrorist cells are operating in several African countries. "U.S. policies toward all regions of the world have been forced to adjust to the post-September 11 world," he said. "The general weakness of African governments makes parts of the continent hospitable grounds for terrorist operations."

One of the hospitable parts of the continent that Royce had in mind is Liberia, where arms dealers, drug traffickers, Eastern European mobsters, and mercenaries have all found safe haven under Taylor. So, too, has Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, according to a recent story in The Washington Post which reported that al Qaeda set up shop in Liberia in 1998 and has earned millions of dollars by buying cheap diamonds from Taylor's government and selling them in Europe. Last March, the U.S. government backed a United Nations resolution that banned travel by senior Liberian officials and Monrovia's chief financial and military supporters, including Minin. Now, the Bush administration is supporting efforts to tighten sanctions in an effort to cut the flow of weapons to Liberia and the RUF, which is supported by Taylor's regime.

Lee Wolosky, a former National Security Council official, calls black-market dealers a new and significant security threat. "There can be no world order with these international criminal syndicates running amok," says Wolosky, who until last July headed a little-known interagency working group charged with monitoring and controlling the small arms trade. "They have significantly increased regional destabilization in Africa and threaten the transition to law-based democratic states in Central and Eastern Europe."

Missiles in a Pig Pen

The lion's share of the international arms trade consists of above-board deals between corporate entities and national governments--Lockheed Martin selling a package of F-16 fighter planes to Chile, to cite one recent example. In such cases, private brokers have no role. Lockheed negotiates directly with Chilean government officials and submits the proper paperwork for review at the Office of Defense Trade Controls, the State Department agency charged with overseeing the arms business.

However, private brokers are essential in moving weapons to regimes under international embargoes or to insurgents or terrorists who have no legal means of purchasing arms. Brokers cover the tracks with complex financial transactions that make it almost impossible to follow the money, bribes to ensure that customs inspectors and other officials avert their gaze from illicit cargo, and bogus documents, especially "end-user certificates" that show a false destination for the arms. Once shipped, the goods are re-routed to their true destination.

During the Cold War, a small number of arms dealers with close ties to the CIA or KGB dominated the private weapons trade. As the Soviet bloc imploded, a new generation of arms dealers appeared on the scene. Their ranks include numerous Eastern European mobsters, who are likely to be involved in drug trafficking, prostitution, and...