UN: Arms traffic with Libya

Top Channel published a report at the UN Organization, which proves that the Albanian authorities have sold arms in Libya during 2011, breaking this way the UN embargo to the country that at that time was involved in an armed conflict. The report discovers that the traffic has been made only one month before the killing of the former dictator, Muhamar Gaddhafi.

The UN investigation group that has held a visit in Tirana to collect facts, proved that on 10, 11 and 12 September 2011, two Albanian airplanes loaded with arms have taken off to the Libyan city of Benghazi, but their legal destination on papers was the United Arab Emirates.

The traffic scheme includes several companies, such as MEICO, the Albanian public company for exporting and importing arms. In July 2011, MEICO was contacted by an Armenian company, DG Arms Corporation, which wanted to buy arms on behalf of the UAE.

But MEICO preferred to make the sale to a state owned company, which included in the scheme the “Ukrinmash”, the company owned by the Ukrainian government. According to the UN investigation, MEICO has sold 800.000 12.7,108 mm bullets to the Ukrainian company.

The UN investigators have discovered that the Albanian bullets were part of a 2 million cargo that the Ukrinmash was about to sell to the UAE, together with 1000 AK 47. There is no information about the destination of the other 1.2 million bullets, and the UN says that investigations are still undergoing.

Behind this scheme, which looks like a legal arms trade on papers, hides an illegal traffic between Tirana and Benghazi. UN experts have proved that on 10, 11 and 12 September 2011, MEICO has secured the flight permits to export 800.000 bullets from Rinas to the international airport of Abu Dhabi.

But the flight course deviated and the loads ended up in the Libyan city of Benghazi. The company that carried out the cargo is “AYK AVIA”, already in the UN black list for breaking the embargo with Somalia.

The Albanian authorities declared that they were not aware of the deviation of the flight, something that has happened outside the Albanian airspace. But the UN investigators say that they have evidence that some of the Albanian authorities had sufficient information for this deviation, but they didn’t take any measure. According to them, this is proved by the landing request that the Albanian airplane has made to the Albanian authorities.

Although the arms’ destination was the UAE, the official request of the airplane that was handed over to the Albanian authorities had already defined the itinerary “Tirana-Zarzis-Benghazi”. The landing request specifies that the cargo is considered dangerous, which means that they were carrying weapons.

The airport authorities were aware about the flight courses before the first flight, in which it was shown that the destination was Benghazi. There are three flights in total to Benghazi, which have not been questioned by the Albanian authorities.

The report discovered that Albania has sent a letter to the UN investigation panel in which they explain that the deviation has not been detected by the Albanian and international authorities, justifying it with a human error and lack of attention by the traffic agents.

Defense Ministry: We didn’t supply Benghazi

The Albanian Ministry of Defense declared that they have not broken the embargo with the UN. Different from what is said on the report, in which the Ministry said that it was all about a human error, the General Secretary of the Ministry declared that the arms from Albania were sent to supply the Libyan rebels, not Gaddhafi.

“No embargo has been violated. UN is investigating a cargo with 800.000 bullets, which has arrived in another destination. This quantity was sent to support the rebel forces. The declarations made by the opposition are misinforming the people for two things: first, no embargo was broken, and secondly, the supply wasn’t sent to Colonel Gadhaffi, but to the Libyan rebels. SP is lying once again”, the Secretary declared.
 

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