A RUSSIAN businessman has offered to arrange for eight tons of ammunition to be parachuted to a militant organisation affiliated to Al-Qaeda in Somalia after being approached by a Sunday Times reporter posing as a middleman for the group.

The offer to hire out an aircraft and provide parachutes for the mission to Somalia, which is under a United Nations arms embargo, demonstrates how easy it is to flout the efforts of western governments to stop illegal arms trafficking.

The journalist, posing as an intermediary for the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), contacted Alexander Radionov, who had previously come to the attention of the UN and other international organisations over suspicious arms flights in Africa. In an exchange of telephone calls and faxes the Russian agreed to help in return for a large fee.

The UN had already noted that his airline Pelican Air, based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, was operating an ageing Antonov 8 freighter that had connections to Viktor Bout, the Russian arms trafficker.

Bout was described by Peter Hain, the former Foreign Office minister, as a “merchant of death” for his role in conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.

It was in a fax from Guernsey, chosen because of Bout’s former business links there, that the journalist told Radionov he wanted to charter the Antonov for two flights from the Yemen to “GPS coordinates in central southern Somalia”, an area occupied by the rebel UIC. He went on to tell Radionov “the flight will not be declared” and asked for help in finding parachutes for the air drop.

In his faxed reply Radionov asked for the approximate distance to the dropping zone from a Yemeni airstrip so that, for flight declaration purposes, he could “determine alternate air-port” to which the Antonov 8 would notionally be flying.

Radionov concluded: “We would like to receive in advance total amount $200,000 [£98,000] for aircraft positioning. The cost of each flight will be $50,000 plus ground expenses and fuel required. Await your reply, Regards, Alexander Radionov.”

This weekend Peter Danssaert, who works as an aviation consultant for the UN security council’s sanctions committee, said: “Radionov has come to official attention in United Nations and other reports on a couple of occasions, both before and after he acquired Viktor Bout’s old aircraft.

“Examples like this show once again the inherent weaknesses in the current international regulatory systems for both the arms trade and the aviation industry.”

Bout has made it almost impossible for investigators to trace his activities. At the height of his notoriety, when he was supplying arms to the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, rebels in Angola and the Taliban in Afghanistan, he operated 50 aircraft in two airlines, Flying Dolphin and Santa Cruz Imperial from Sharjah.

Analysts believe he now operates through leasing aircraft to smaller airlines so that he and his backers continue to make an income while the individual operators take the risks.

This weekend Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, renewed calls for an international arms trade treaty backed by laws to ensure arms brokers and transporters were brought to justice.

“All too often, gun runners are able to deliver weapons into the hands of those that will use them to murder and terrorise civilians,” she said.

Had the arms drop to Somalia arranged with Radionov taken place, it would have been merely the latest in a succession of gun-running operations. “If we can’t seal the frontiers of Somalia, we’re never going to stop the flow of fresh weapons and thus never going to broker a lasting peace,” said a UN official.

Google bombers

AN AL-QAEDA instruction manual available on the internet encourages followers to use Google Earth to help them select targets for bombing, writes Hala Jaber.

Would-be terrorists are shown how to set up their own cells without having to communicate directly with Al-Qaeda leaders.

They are advised to undergo physical training before learning from various websites how to use weapons and make bombs. A plan of attack can then be prepared using Google Earth satellite images to create a complete picture of the target, they are told.

Followers should not be put off making car bombs, the manual concludes. It refers readers to videos showing how to turn propane and butane gas cylinders into bombs.

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