The Libyan officer tried to cloak the purpose of his call to the Italian arms dealer. "A friend," he said, wanted to buy 1 million "pieces" and 50 million items of "food."
But when that phone call was placed in 2006, Italian police were listening. They knew the meaning. Libya was shopping for guns — lots of them.
Authorities shadowed the negotiations between Libyan officials and a group of black-market dealers from across Italy for a year before they moved in and broke up what would have been a $64 million deal for hundreds of thousands of Chinese-made assault rifles.
The case, detailed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, raises questions about whether Libya, a country eagerly shedding its reputation as a sponsor of terrorism, is still surreptitiously supporting suspect groups and regimes. The investigation also underscores the Italian underworld's role as a go-between for illegal arms deals.
The court papers say at least part of the shipment was expected to go to other countries, and experts believe likely destinations were African countries including war-torn Chad and Sudan, where killings of civilians are widespread.
Libyan officials did not respond to questions from the AP about the allegations.
Italian prosecutors say the deal involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to senior Libyan officials.
Italy was a natural place for them to shop.
"Organized crime syndicates ... use Italy for brokering or transshipping illegal arms transfers to the Balkans, Africa, the United States and Colombia, in a trade that includes cocaine and human trafficking," said Sergio Finardi, a military logistics expert at TransArmsEurope, a nonprofit group based in Italy and the United States that monitors arms deals.
It was anti-Mafia prosecutors in the central city of Perugia who discovered the Libyan transactions, while conducting an unrelated investigation into drug trafficking by the mob. One of the drug suspects was found to be part of a group that used offshore companies in Malta and Cyprus to broker arms deals.
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