Complex Diamond and Gun Smuggling During Liberian Civil War

LIBERIA’S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION has heard allegations that a retired agent of the CIA was instrumental in facilitating a vast diamonds-for-arms smuggling operation on behalf of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor.

Taylor, who headed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), became the country’s President in 1997. He is currently held by the United Nations in The Hague, pending trial for crimes against humanity.

The allegations were made at the recent Economic Crimes Hearing of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Monrovia by Imants Liepiņš, an ivestigator with the Public Investigation Bureau, a business intelligence firm based in Riga, Latvia.

Mr. Liepiņš, who is a recent nominee for UNESCO’s 2009 World Press Freedom Prize, presented his findings during an official hearing titled “Economic Crimes, Corruption and the Conflict in Liberia: Policy Options for an Emerging Democracy and Sustainable Peace”.

AN INTRICATE NETWORK

Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which aims to unearth human rights violations and the exploitation of the country’s natural or public resources to perpetuate war, heard last Thursday that Roger D’Onofrio
Ruggiero, an Italian-American 40-year veteran of the CIA, worked with Charles Taylor and others to channel diamonds into Europe through a number of front-companies.

According to the allegations, D’Onofrio, who at the time lived outside Naples, Italy, helped organize the smuggling operation with Ibrahim Bah.

Bah is a Senegalese with Libyan connections, who at that time was a member of Liberia’s Revolutionary United Front, a guerilla group that fought unsuccessfully against the government throughout the 1990s. According to Douglas Farah’s book Blood from Stones (Broadway Books, 2004), Bah was connected with D’Onofrio in the 1970s, when the former was funded by the CIA to join the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the war against the Soviet Red Army.

In the early 1990s, Bah, who by then had established al-Qaeda connections, became Charles Taylor’s “Minister for Mineral Resources”, a post that enabled him to handle the majority of NPFL’s diamonds-for-arms deals.

SLOVENIANS, AMERICANS AND OTHERS

Bah is alleged to have also drawn on his Libyan connections to involve in the smuggling operation representatives of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi.

The smuggling was conducted through a front-company, International Business Consultant Ltd, and Kintex, a Bulgarian import-export company with offices in Switzerland.

• Kintex “supplied weapons and bullets to [International Business Consultant Ltd] and sold diamonds in return, camouflaged as oranges and olives”.
• This was allegedly done with the help of a Swiss lawyer, Rudolf Meroni.
  

During last Thursday’s presentation in Monrovia, Imants Liepiņš recounted D’Onofrio’s 1995 testimony before Italian prosecutors, in which the former CIA agent admitted he owned shares in International Business Consultant Ltd, as did Charles Taylor, Ibrahim Bah, and others.

Interestingly, Liepiņš revealed that among the shareholders was Nill Taylor (no relation to Charles Taylor), an American who claimed to be “a representative of the US Government” (though not apparently connected with the US Embassy in Monrovia, which in the 1990s was headed by a series of interim chargés d’affaires).

Nill Taylor, who met with D’Onofrio in Liberia on at least one occasion, was an associate of Nicolas Oman, a notorious Slovenian weapons smuggler who was rewarded for his services to Charles Taylor by being named Liberia’s honorary consul in Slovenia.

Oman’s son, who lives in Australia, was appointed Liberia’s honorary consul in the county until 2006, when his family’s weapons smuggling ventures became the subject of a diplomatic row between Slovenia and Australia.

A RENEGADE AGENT

Mr. Liepiņš’ allegations have made headlines throughout Liberia, but have yet to appear in any mainstream Western media outlet.

This is extremely disappointing in light of the fact that these allegations about D’Onofrio are not new.

• In 1995, the former CIA agent was arrested by Italian police officers investigating a money laundering and arms smuggling operation into the former Yugoslavia.
• Italian authorities charged D’Onofrio, whom the local press dubbed “Specter’, “after James Bond’s arch-enemy”, with using CIA “contacts [he] made during the 40 years he worked for the US intelligence agency to organize illegal financial deals and arms shipments”.
• These reportedly included a foiled attempt to supply Slovenian arms smugglers with osmium, a chemical element used to manufacture nuclear detonators.
  

The Rest @ Intelnews

* Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis has been writing and teaching on the politics of intelligence for over ten years. His areas of academic expertise include the institutional analysis of the intelligence community; the interception of communications; and the history of intelligence with particular reference to international espionage during the Cold War. He is co-founder and Senior Editor of intelNews.org.

After 500 Posts - The State of Africa Jihad

Noticing that this is the 500th post into the Shimron letters, I wanted to summarize our conclusions to date.

The letters were originally begun when we noticed a deliberate, careful, generational strategy underway for the Islamization of Africa. That, in itself, is not new. What is of concern is that a salafi emphasis on Jihad as-sayf (Jihad of the Sword) against the visible enemy in Africa. The visible enemy appears to be any non-Salafi form of Islam. It become clear that a multi-phase approach was underway, then we came across al Qaeda's 7 Phased plan ( this post keeps disappearing off the site- look in the German newspaper Der Spiegel for the original if it disappears again) This reconciled what we had observed in Africa.

Since then the plan has progressed less successfully than they had hoped, but the plan is still underway.

In essence there are three categories into which the 53 African Countries Fall:

1. Islamic or Secular Islamic Countries
2. Countries in transition (Moving one way or the other)
3. Christian or native religion dominated Countries

Salafist - Islamists who are working in the various stages of persuasion have different tactics underway for each type of country:

In Islamic or Kafir Secular Islamic Countries, Saudi Arabia, Libya or Egypt often funds Dawahs to direct local Muslim Associations onto the correct path, using economic incentives. They look for the most promising students to send to Schools for further radicalization, or to recruit as fighters in Foreign Jihads.
(for example - Sudan, Somalia, Algeria, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, Northern Nigeria, Eritrea)

Countries in Transition
Saudi Arabia, Libya or Egypt often funds Muslim candidates and supports political movements which are calling for the removal of resiting laws to be replaced with Sharia law. (12 Northern Nigerian districts have already succumbed to this effort). Dawahs focused toward radicalization is intensified.

(for example - Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Ivory Coast, Benin, Liberia, Southern Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo and DR Congo, CAR., Possibly Coastal Tanzania, Eritrea)

An emerging tactic in Kafir Islamic and in Transitional Countries is to provide support to local Islamic Rebel Groups, without a multi-national agenda, to lure them into a Next-Caliphate Islamist Agenda, or to recruit away their best fighters. (Algeria, Chad, Western -Sahara, Mozambique, Angola)

Christian or native religion-dominated Countries

Again, Saudi Arabia, Libya or Egypt teachers, business people, and Muslim Aid agencies come in, especially to the poorer tribes and proselytize peeling away whole tribes based on natural tribal or ethnic differences. Significant Zakat and Sadaqa fund raising efforts become based in these countries, because these countries often seem to have much more money than Islamic countries.

(for example - South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Western Tanzania)

Since we have been watching, Liberia, the Congos, and CAR have fallen from Christian to Transitional, Ethiopia has become more isolated, and Kenya is in danger.

I acknowledge that the Situaion is not as simple as this. This situation has been overlaid by US, Russia, and Chinese battles for influence in Africa. Their blundering Jingoism-laced efforts often work against their own interests, as they demonstrate an awesome lack of understanding of the local African and Isalmist dynamic.

In Short, there is an imperialistic war being waged in Africa by Arabs, Europeans, Americans, Chinese, and even Indians, and no one seems to notice the African Jihad underway.

What I expect to see next, Is Western, especially Americanand Brittish Embassys and businesses as well as United Nations entities, to come under physcial attack, conducted by local Islamic groups, radicalized by Arabs, funded by Chinese oil money, using weapons purchased from the Russians (or Belorus). It is Already happening in Sudan, Somalia and Chad.

-Shimron

Charles Taylor Connections Re-Sanctioned: Liberian Al Qaeda Connection Still Active?

The Office of Foreign Asset Control has lifted sanction sanctions against Liberia that had been imposed since the days of Charles Taylor. However, on 23 May, 2007 the reimplemented targeted sanctions against those connected to the former regime of Charles Taylor.

This is an interesting note, and suggests that the US is still concerned that there are some active terrorist connections still active in Liberia. Douglas Farah wrote extensively about Charles Taylor's al Qaeda diamond & money laundering connections.

Any thoughts about al Qaeda's current activities in Liberia?

Shimron Issachar