Somaliland to charge 8 over weapons-laden plane

[Robb]

Source: Reuters (Africa)

HARGEISA (Reuters) - Somalia's northern breakaway enclave of Somaliland will charge the crew of a plane laden with weapons with airspace violation and carrying weapons to Puntland despite a U.N. arms embargo, a minister said on Sunday.

Mohamed Hashi Abdi, minister of air transport and civil aviation, said Somaliland had shown a U.N. delegation from the Committee of Weapons Embargo on Somalia, the weapons the plane was carrying when it landed on December10.

"Investigation of the Antonov-24 plane, which landed in Hargeisa carrying weapons, a six-man crew and 2 South African passengers, is completed. Their case is in the hands of the prosecution and will be taken to court soon," Abdi said.

The two passengers will also be charged with falsely claiming to be journalists, the minister said.

Read more: http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE6BI05B20101219

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Sounds suspicious, and expensive.

[On the Road]

1. I Am Glad Somaliland is Making Efforts to Escape the Chaos

in the rest of Somalia. They have a better claim to statehood that a lot of breakaway areas.

I don't know why the article refers to it as an 'enclave', though. Here is Somaliland:



And this is the definition of an enclave:

In political geography, an enclave is a territory whose geographical boundaries lie entirely within the boundaries of another territory.


(Fig. 1) C is A's enclave and B's exclave


On Edit: Probably spending too much time on the Strange Maps blog.

[nyy1998]

5. Agreed, they deserve international recognizition

[Posteritatis]

6. Absolutely. (nt)

[leveymg]

2. This follows a similar U.S. arrest of an American and an Israeli in June.

Someone appears to have an eye on destabilizing the Horn, and may have a particular interest in the airfields along the northern Somaliland/Puntland Coast from Berbera to Bander Qassim (Boossaso): See, post and comments at http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0610/Israeli_American_indicted_for_gun_running_to_Somalia.html ; also, see related, See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x127651

Israeli, American indicted for gun running to Somalia - Laura Rozen: Israeli, American indicted for gun running to Somalia
June 28, 2010

Israeli, American indicted for gun running to Somalia

A federal grand jury in Miami, Florida has indicted an Israeli defense consultant and an American citizen of conspiring to transfer hundreds of AK-47s to northern Somalia.

Chanoch Miller, an Israeli aeronautical engineer who previously served as an executive with Israel’s Radom Aviation, was indicted on June 17, 2010 on seven counts of conspiring to export defense equipment to an embargoed nation, Somalia, money laundering, providing false end user certificates, and related charges.

His co-defendant’s name is redacted in the indictment but is described as an American citizen.

Beginning in April, according to the indictment, Miller conspired with his American co-defendant to find an air cargo service to fly hundreds of AK-47s from Bosnia to the northern Somalian city of Banderal, using false end user certificates of Chad, in violation of U.S. arms export control laws. Somalia is under a UN arms embargo. But the transport services source they contacted turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Customs and Immigrations Enforcement (ICE) agency, the indictment describes.

“On April 15, 2010, sent an email to an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement confidential informant (hereafter CI) and asked if CI had Antonov 12 or similar line available for two charter flights from Bosnia to Africa to lift 12 tons on each flight for two round trips, landing in Africa “to unload mil equipments” and return to Bosnia for a second trip,” the indictment reads.

“On April 21, 2010, sent an email to the CI and advised the CI that the cargo would be Boxed AK-47s, 6 to 7.6 tons, and that the CI could choose to use AN26 or AN12 aircraft from Tuzla Bosnia to Banderal, Northern Somalia and that payment would be made by wire transfer or cash before departure.”

“On April 21, 2010, sent an email to the CI and advised that he has enough cargo for 100 flights if the first flight is successful.”

[On the Road]

3. Do You Have More Background on Who Might be

destabilizing the region for what purpose? I haven't followed this area very well recently.

When looking for that map, though, I did find a good article on the history of Somaliland:

http://www.somalilandtimes.net/sl/2007/284/201.shtml

[leveymg]

4. I laid out my thoughts on the subject in the earlier DU post cited in my comment above.

I believe such a planning option is still operative for the reasons explained.