Federal investigators are reexamining a recent arms smuggling case in Florida to determine whether agents of the Pakistani government tried to buy missiles and nuclear weapons components in the United States last year for use by terrorists or Pakistan's military.
The original criminal case -- a sting operation in which intermediaries allegedly tried to buy the weapons from a diamond thief-turned-informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms -- attracted little public notice when arrests were made in June 2001. It resulted in a single guilty plea and the sealing of court files for another defendant.
One reason, informed sources said, was that prosecutors, in an unusual step, removed references to Pakistan from public filings because of diplomatic concerns.
The alleged weapons buyers repeatedly said in conversations taped by authorities that they represented the Pakistani government and were arranging the purchases for Pakistani intelligence, the then-Taliban government of Afghanistan or terrorists.
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2002: U.S. Reopens Arms Case In Probe for Taliban Role
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RANDY GLASS AND OPERATION DIAMONDBACK
Spring 1999 (B): Randy Glass is a con artist turned government informant participating in a sting called Operation Diamondback. [Palm Beach Post, 9/29/01] He discusses an illegal weapons deal with an Egyptian American named Mohamed el Amir. In wiretapped conversations, Mohamed discusses the need to get false papers to disguise a shipment of illegal weapons. His brother, Dr. Magdy el Amir, has been a wealthy neurologist in Jersey City for the past twenty years. Two other weapons dealers later convicted in sting operation involving Glass also lived in Jersey City, and both el Amirs admit knowing one of them, Diaa Mohsen (see June 12, 2001). Mohsen has been paid at least once by Dr. el Amir. In 1998, Congressman Ben Gilman was given a foreign intelligence report suggesting that Dr. el Amir owns an HMO that is secretly funded by bin Laden, and that money is being skimmed from the HMO to fund terrorist activities. The state of New Jersey later buys the HMO and determines that $15 million were unaccounted for and much of that has been diverted into hard-to-trace offshore bank accounts.MSNBC, 3/18/03 (B)]