UN panel names Liberia as aiding RUF

Liberia has been actively supporting Sierra Leonean RUF rebels at all levels providing training, weapons, logistics, a staging ground for attacks and a safe haven for retreat, a UN Panel investigating arms and diamond shipments to the RUF has found.

A summary of the panel’s findings, released on Wednesday, says, “There is also conclusive evidence of supply lines to Liberia through Burkina Faso.”

Weapons supplied to Burkina Faso by governments or private arms merchants “have been systematically diverted” for use in the conflict in Sierra Leone, it says. For example, it says, a shipment of 68 mt of weapons arrived at Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, on 13 March 1999 but the bulk of them were trans-shipped within days to Liberia.

“Most were flown aboard a BAC-111 owned by an Israeli businessman of Ukrainian origin, Leonid Minin,” it said.

The summary describes the role of aircraft in the RUF’s supply chain as vital, especially over the past two years as the RUF’s sphere of influence has widened. The report says the RUF were supplied by helicopter on a sporadic basis before 1997 and regularly since then. Helicopters operating in Liberia, it says, land at in the Sierra Leonean towns of Buedu, Kailahun, Yengema (in the east) Makeni (west-central), Tumbudu and elsewhere in Kono District.

President Taylor named

Liberian President Charles Taylor is named in the report as being “actively involved in fuelling the violence in Sierra Leone”. It says that many businessmen close to his inner-circle operate on an international scale, getting their weaponry mainly in eastern Europe.

“One key individual is a wealthy Lebanese businessman named Talal El-Ndine,” it says.

It describes him as the inner-circle’s paymaster who is responsible for remunerating Liberians fighting with the RUF and those bringing diamonds out of Sierra Leone, as well as the pilots and crew of aircraft that make clandestine shipments into or out of Liberia.

Burkina Faso and Liberia vehemently deny any involvement in fuelling the war in Sierra Leone and in diamond dealings with the RUF.

However, the report notes that the weakness of regional air surveillance capacities has created a climate in which arms traffickers operate at will. In addition, the lax licence and tax laws has for years made Liberia a haven as a flag of convenience for fringe air cargo operators. These weak laws provide ship and aircraft owners maximum cover with minimal regulatory interference, it says. A schedule Liberian-registered aircraft the government provided the panel listed seven planes but no documentation was available on more than 15 other aircraft identified by the panel,” according to the report.

“Many aircraft flying under the Liberian flag, therefore, are apparently unknown to Liberian authorities and are never inspected or seen in the country,” it says.

Arms suppliers

The report says that the Liberian transport minister, in November 1999, authorised Kenyan national Sanjivan Ruprah to act as the Global Civil Aviation agent worldwide for the Liberian Civil Aviation register. However, when the Panel asked the ministries of transport, justice and the police authorities about Ruprah, they denied knowing him.

“Ruprah is, in fact, a well-known weapons dealer,” the report says. “He travels using a Liberian diplomatic passport in the name of Samir M. Nasr, and carries additional authorisation from the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry.”

In addition, it names a well-known supplier to non-official bodies in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere as using the Liberian aviation register extensively, operating out of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The supplier, Victor Bout, has a web of over 50 planes and multiple cargo charter and freight-forwarding companies, it says, “many of which are involved in shipping illicit cargo”.

It says that one of Bout’s Illyushin 76 planes was used in July and August 2000 for arms deliveries from eastern Europe to Liberia. This plane and an Antonov made four deliveries, it says, on 4 and 27 July, and on 1 and 23 August.

“The cargo included military helicopters, spare rotors, anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems, missiles, armoured vehicles, machine guns and ammunition,” the report says.
This is a breech of UN Security Council arms embargoes into Liberia and Sierra Leone. Liberia, it goes on, “is being actively assisted by Burkina Faso. It is being tacitly assisted by countries allowing weapons to pass through or over their territory without question and by those countries that provide a base for the aircraft used in such operations”.

Recommendations

In one of its several recommendation to stop the practices, the panel says that all aircraft with the Liberian register EL and based at airports outside the country be grounded immediately. These include planes based in Sharjah and other airports in the UAE, in the Republic of Congo, the DRC, Gabon, Angola, Rwanda and Kenya.

In addition, it suggests that all Liberian registered aircraft operators file their airworthiness and operation licences and their insurance documents with the International Civil Aviation Organisation, in Montreal, Canada.
Failure to comply must, the panel says, lead to the grounding of the aircraft.

The panel has endorsed a proposal by Burkina Faso that the UN Security Council supervise a proposed mechanism to monitor all arms imports into its territory and their use for three years.