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Spanish Customs Officers Uncover Weapons Haul in ship en route from Israel to Nicaragua

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 5 July 2007
1 comment

Wars and conflicts Europe

Spanish customs officers uncovered more than 1,000 weapons aboard a ship en route from Israel to Nicaragua during a routine cargo inspection, the governor of the southern Andalusia region said Wednesday.

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, MADRID

Posted 07/04/07 11:13
Spanish customs officers uncovered more than 1,000 weapons aboard a ship en route from Israel to Nicaragua during a routine cargo inspection, the governor of the southern Andalusia region said Wednesday.
Gov. Juan Jose Lopez Garzon said officers in the port of Algesiras confiscated 400 pistols, 300 rifles and 380 carbines found in a container on the Maersk Detroit on Tuesday.
There were also 500 air guns, the only weapons declared on the manifest.
The firearms were detected thanks to a new scanner, paid for by Washington, whose use is obligatory on all ships bound for the United States.
The Maersk Detroit, a container ship, had come from Haifa and was due to call at a U.S. port before arriving at Managua.
It was allowed to continue its route towards Italy after the container with the weapons was offloaded.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2878097&C=landwar

Forum posts

  • From Haifa to Algeciras to Nicaragua via Italy? Doesn’t make sense. None of the original reports in the Spanish or the Danish press make any mention of Italy.

    But otherwise the information is correct. Note that A.P. Møller-Mærsk, the owner of the ship, is the world’s largest container transport company, as well as Denmark’s largest corporation, which has dominated political life in that country for several generations. Since the first Gulf War, A.P. Møller-Mærsk has had long-term contracts for forwarding the U.S Military’s equipment, and by October 2002 they were already actively participating of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. No wonder Denmark was the only European country besides the U.K. to officially declare war on Sadaam Hussein.

    This is just a very short list of all the wrongs one could list about this particular corporation. In the actual case, however, they claim that they had no knowledge of what actually was in the container. The waybill only mentioned 400 airguns.

    A more interesting question is, who were those weapons destined to? Opponents the Nicaraguan government, which is on friendly terms with Chavez, Morales a.o.?

    Qûr Tharkasdóttir