Albanian Government Selling Weapons to Muammar Qaddafi

In January 2010, MEICO a company owned by the Ministry of Defense of Albania engaged in a complex operation of exporting 150,000 82-millimeter mortar shells to Libya. Two Serbian gun smugglers made this export possible.

One of them was Slobodan Tesic, who violated the UN weapons embargo to President’s Charles Taylor Liberia; the other was Zoran Damianovic, who in July 2005 spent a short stint in prison in Montenegro for attempted smuggling of a thousand M70 and M72 Zastava assault rifles [note: These are reverse-engineered Kalashnikov variants.]

The export of 150,000 82-millimeter mortar shells was made to a Montenegro company Yugoimport of Montenegro, a subsidiary of the Serb weapons company Yugoimport SDPR according to the EUC (end user certificate) and the cargo manifest and the bill lading of the vessel. The payment was made through Niksicka Banka of Montenegro, a bank with old ties to the weapons trade of the MOD of Albania.

This kind of ammunition export smells badly as Montenegro, a small country of 600,000 inhabitants, imports 150,000 82-millimeter mortar shells when its military by 2009 had phased out the 82-millimeter mortars. What was the need to import mortar shells while phasing out the mortars using such ammunition?

According to the records of Harbor Master Office of Durres Port (main port of Albania) and the Center for the Surveillance of Sea Space situated at Plepa, 5 miles away from Durres Port (the center is run by the Albanian Navy), the vessel loaded with the containers full of mortar shells followed a south-southwest course in the Adriatic Sea. Strange enough Montenegro lies on the Adriatic shore north of Albania.

This riddle of a vessel with a north destination sailing south can be solved thanks to the Port Clearance document issued by the office of the Harbor Master of Libyan port of Ras Lanuf, proving that the vessel left Ras Lanuf port empty after unloading the cargo there. This Port Clearance of Ras Lanuf was handed over to the Albanian Port authorities after the vessel returned to Durres Port.

The last but not the least the Niksicka Banka paid for the purchase of the 150,000 mortar shells by funds coming from a Libyan company called LAFIC (Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company). On Feb. 23 insurgents and defected soldiers stormed the SAM 5 air base near Tobruk. They filmed seized caches of weapons and ammunition.