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Indonesian Arms dealer pleads guilty for supporting the LTTE
(By Walter Jayawardhana)
Another Indonesian arms
dealer, Hadji Subandi (69) pleaded guilty in the second Tamil Tiger
sting operation case before a Baltimore USA federal judge for attempting
to smuggle sophisticated weapons to the foreign terrorist group the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Subandi pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide
material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, as well
as two counts of money laundering and the attempted exportation of arms
and munitions, federal prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake scheduled
Subandi's sentencing for June 15. He faces a maximum of 15 years in
prison for the conspiracy charge, 20 years for each of two
money-laundering charges and 10 years for the attempted exportation of
arms, according to federal prosecutors.
Making a statement after the guilty plea Maryland US
Attorney Rod J. Rosentein said "We are committed to using all available
legal tools to prevent terrorism, including undercover operations
targeting people who attempt to obtain military weapons in violation of
American law." Three of the other Indonesian men arrested with Subandi
have pleaded guilty before, and the other two a Singaporan and a Sri
Lankan Tamil are scheduled for trial in May.
Subandi had been arrested in September 2006 with five
other suspected arms dealers after an elaborate sting operation. As part
of the sting, alleged representatives of the Tamil Tigers deposited
$700,000 with undercover agents as a down payment for millions of
dollars in sniper rifles, submachine guns and grenade launchers,
officials say.
In this second successful sting operation conducted by
the US federal government against Tamil terrorist arms buying in the US
Federal Agents arrested five Asian buyers and one Sri Lankan Tamil for
trying to buy US Dollars 900,000 dollars worth of surface to air
missiles and other sophisticated military weapons for Sri Lanka's
separatist terrorists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Apart from the missiles, the LTTE brokers were trying
to buy grenade launchers, submachine guns, sniper rifles and night
vision goggles.
The accused were negotiating with a bogus company put
up by the US to buy surface to air missiles and other weapons, "an
arsenal of U.S. military hardware -- enough to inflict serious
casualties on any military force, let alone a civilian population," a US
official said after the arrests.
One of the suspects who was arrested as a result of
this sting operation , one Haniffa bin Osman of Singapore travelled to
the United States in July 2006 and stayed in a Baltimore Four Star hotel
in the city's inner harbour, dining and wining with the officials, US
officials revealed.
At one point the arms buyer for the LTTE, Haniffa bin
Osman was taken to a police firing range at Havre de Grace, in the US
state of Maryland, close to Baltimore and was allowed to test fire some
weapons he was planning to buy but the police had surreptitiously
removed the signs that indicated that it was a police firing range
before his arrival, officials said.
U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said the suspects were
arrested Thursday(Sept.28) and Friday (Sept. 29) 2006 in Guam, where
they had met with undercover agents to finalize the delivery of the
weapons to the LTTE. Guam is an island that belongs to the United
States.
According to an indictment unsealed the Singapoerean,
Osman, (55), and Indonesian nationals Erick Wotulo,(60), and Haji
Subandi, (69) were accused of conspiring to provide material support to
a terrorist organization, conspiring to export arms without a required
State Department license and money laundering. A related criminal
complaint filed in Guam charges Thirunavukarasu Varatharasa (36), a
citizen of Sri Lanka, as a participant in the alleged conspiracy to
export arms. He was to finally inspect the weapons for the LTTE before
the final payments were to be made.
Subandi was also charged in a separate complaint,
along with two other Indonesian nationals, with conspiring to ship
state-of the-art night vision goggles to Indonesia without the necessary
State Department approvals. Authorities said Subandi described the other
defendants -- Reinhard Rusli, 34, and Helmi Soedirdja, 33 -- as his
financial partners in that transaction. Subandi, Wotulo, Rusli and
Soedirja have so far pleaded guilty.
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