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Case Study 2: Legal or Illegal? The Mysterious Iranian Shipment

On the evening of September 29, 2001, an Ilyushin-76 plane registered to Chabahar Air of Tehran, Iran, landed at the Bratislava airport and offloaded approximately three tons of cargo, which was to be loaded onto a Ukrainian plane for onward shipment to Angola. The Iranian plane departed again before authorities discovered that the contents of the shipment—504 units of anti-tank munitions packed in 84 containers—did not match the accompanying documents.¹⁰¹

The munitions, designed for an RPG-7 launcher and commonly referred to as rocket-propelled grenades, bore no markings indicating the producer, but they were evidently new and were likely manufactured in Iran.¹⁰² The RPG-7 launcher is ubiquitous in conflict regions around the globe. Iran produces, and makes available for export, several types of anti-tank rounds. These include three rockets that are fired from RPG-7 launchers, two of which have greater armor-piercing capability.¹⁰³ Human Rights Watch understands that about half of the anti-tank weapons included in the consignment from Iran were of a sophisticated type able to penetrate battle tanks with reactive armor.¹⁰⁴

More than two years after the Iranian munitions were seized, they remained impounded, and many questions continued to surround the case. Government officials are reluctant to provide details about the attempted shipment before they have completed their criminal investigation, and some of the companies that were party to the transaction have been similarly tight-lipped.¹⁰⁵ In other cases, officials and companies responded to Human Rights Watch’s requests for information, and their responses are reflected below.

The information available at this time is not conclusive, but it provides a glimpse into how arms brokers and other intermediaries, often working in tandem with the governments that use their services, organize complex arms deliveries that, by their nature, are difficult to unravel. The complexity and secrecy surrounding such arms transfers, and the absence of sufficient checks to verify that cargo is properly declared, can provide opportunities for deceptive practices to mask the real nature and destination of weapons shipments. With respect to the seized Iranian cargo, this case offers intriguing signals that point to deception, which may be employed to shield a particularly sensitive arms deal from scrutiny, whether to cover up weapons smuggling or disguise a covert arms deal or perhaps for a more innocent reason. The case also usefully illustrates the potential for abuse inherent in a major loophole in Slovak law: currently no license is required for weapons shipments that transit via Slovakia.

The Bratislava Airport Arms Hand-Over

The Ilyushin-76 from Iran landed at 6:53 p. m. and unloaded its cargo for transfer onto another plane.¹⁰⁶ It departed at 8:39 pm, bound for Copenhagen.¹⁰⁷ The Iranian plane, registration number EP-CFB (formerly listed as EP-SFA), is one of two registered to Chabahar Air.¹⁰⁸ It was operated by a Ukrainian crew and had flown from Iran to Saudi Arabia before making its stop in Slovakia.¹⁰⁹ Chabahar Air is a division of the Chabahar Free-Trade Zone of Iran,¹¹⁰ which is state-owned.¹¹¹ Chabahar Air did not respond to a request for comment.¹¹²

A second aircraft, registered in Ukraine, was at Bratislava waiting to pick up the munitions cargo.¹¹³ It was an Antonov-12, registration number UR-UCK, owned by Ukrainian Cargo Airways (UCA).¹¹⁴ The government of Ukraine owns the airline,¹¹⁵ which specializes in arms transport¹¹⁶ and carries out many other transport contracts.¹¹⁷ Slovak authorities prevented the UCA plane from onloading the cargo from the Iranian shipment, but allowed the plane to depart the following day.¹¹⁸

With the assistance of the Ukrainian authorities and Ukrainian Cargo Airways, Human Rights Watch established that the aircraft carried additional military cargo to Angola. Cargo was collected on departure from Ukraine, as well as during stops in Slovakia and Israel. With respect to transport arrangements, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense indicated that “[t]he plane was freighted for carrying the cargo by [the] company LR Avionics Technologies Ltd.”¹¹⁹ UCA similarly stated: “It was LR Avionics Technologies Ltd, who made the transportation arrangements for the cargo.”¹²⁰

The airline, stating that it had no information about the Iranian cargo, added: “UCA had no information in advance about the composition of the cargo to be loaded in Bratislava,” and noted that no Iranian cargo was in fact onloaded at Bratislava.¹²¹ LR Avionics Technologies, Ltd., based in Herzliya, Israel, strongly denied any involvement in the attempted shipment of Iranian munitions, stating: “[O]ur company was not involved in the transaction of Anti-tank rockets.”¹²² LR Avionics denied press allegations it had made efforts to secure the release of the seized anti-tank munitions held in Slovakia.¹²³ Human Rights Watch was informed that, soon after the Iranian cargo was impounded, someone who said he represented the government of Angola intervened privately to seek its release.¹²⁴

The Players

A number of different companies were involved in this convoluted attempted shipment of Iranian munitions. The exporter of the anti-tank rounds that were impounded in Bratislava was Modlex Export Center, an Iranian state-owned company.¹²⁵ After the cargo was detained, Modlex provided an invoice indicating that the cargo was for the Angolan Ministry of Defense.¹²⁶ This document, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, misidentified the cargo as 400 pieces of 40 mm rocket-propelled grenades.¹²⁷ The actual quantity was considerably more, 504 pieces.¹²⁸ The Iranian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a Human Rights Watch request for comment regarding Modlex.¹²⁹

The Bratislava daily Pravda has alleged that Slovtrans Air, a Bratislava-based company, played a role with respect to the Iranian munitions,¹³⁰ although the person who asserted this connection later cast doubt on her original account. The owner of Slovtrans Air, Mohamad Ahmad Saad, declined to speak about the case on the record.¹³¹ His wife, Mrs. Dobroslava Saad (Saadova in Slovak), however, offered the following account to Pravda:

We have ordered an aircraft from Kiev, which was supposed to take two consignments from Bratislava. One of them contained 16 kilograms of signal rockets from Slovakia. Then, three metric tons of military equipment from Tehran should have been added. The customs office intercepted the second consignment, because the documents from Tehran had been incorrectly filled in. After 20 hours, the Ukrainian aircraft with the Slovak part of the shipment on board departed for Israel.¹³²

Mrs. Saad stated that the goods were accurately declared as military equipment when flight permissions were requested: “The Transport Ministry knew about this; everyone knew. Such transport requires a large number of authorizations, which we had to obtain in advance. Our aircraft legally landed in Israel, even at a military airport, which requires the Israeli Government’s approval.”¹³³

Mrs. Saad, contacted by Human Rights Watch, clarified that she does not serve Slovtrans Air in any official capacity. When asked by email about the reported role of Slovtrans Air in this case and another transaction with which the company had been publicly linked (described further below), she said: “I can barely recall any of the thing [sic] you mentioned in your message, and I am surprised of its allegations.” She added, “None of what you mentioned was chartered by Slovtrans Air.”¹³⁴

More Questions than Answers

Suspicion about the Iranian arms shipment has persisted, and it is difficult to reconcile a number of elements of the case. First, no adequate explanation has been given for the false information filed for the Iranian cargo in Bratislava. A spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the customs declaration was filled out for “different material, not arms.”¹³⁵ Moreover, Human Rights Watch understands that the air waybill shown to customs officials listed “general cargo,” and that cargo codes provided when requesting flight permissions were also misleading.¹³⁶

Moreover, although the Angolan media has reported on the seizure of the anti-tank munitions in Slovakia, at no point has the government of Angola publicly acknowledged that it owns the Iranian consignment. As of April 2002, the government of Angola had not replied to an official Slovak request made in October 2001 for clarification as to whether it was the end user.¹³⁷ It also failed to respond to a December 2002 request for comment from Human Rights Watch.

The nature of the munitions also raises questions about their intended deployment. RPGs are flexible weapons that can be fired against targets other than tanks, and they are commonly deployed to provide fire support for light infantry. The impact of anti-tank munitions in African conflicts, which are mostly marked by small arms fire and where tanks are rarely if ever used, is to provide greater explosive power to the troops wielding them, and to therefore enhance their potential to destroy targets of all types. This has been the case in the conflicts in which Angola has been involved. In the Angolan civil war and the regional conflict in DRC, RPGs were fired against buildings, houses, and other civilian structures.¹³⁸

Information that the Iranian munitions were to have been transshipped to Angola via Israel, at a military airport, and combined with Israeli cargo is also of interest. Israel has accused Iran of smuggling arms to the Palestinian Authority, and the United States, with which Slovakia and especially Israel have forged close ties, has branded Iran a “state sponsor of terrorism.” That stigma carried particular weight in the wake of the attacks in the United States, which took place two weeks before this arms delivery was attempted. The incongruity of arms links between Iran and Israel suggests the possibility that this may have represented a covert weapons shipment.¹³⁹

The complex transport arrangements also raise doubts and hint that they were designed to avoid scrutiny of the shipment. A wish to avoid exposing the Iranian connection, for example, could explain why a second plane was used to deliver the cargo, as well as why it was routed through an Israeli military airport.

The arrangements also appear to defy financial logic. By itself, the small consignment of signal flares for export from Slovakia would not justify the chartering of a plane to stop in Bratislava. Human Rights Watch was able to establish that the Ukrainian plane was carrying other cargo (see below), and that it intended to collect more cargo on its way to its final destination. Were that not the case, it would have made more sense for the Iranian plane to deliver all the cargo to Angola.

Other Stops, Additional Cargo

Flight records for the UCA plane show that it departed from Gostomel airport near Kiev, Ukraine, and flew direct to Bratislava, then on to Luanda, the Angolan capital, via Ovda, a military airport in Israel, with intermediate stops in Egypt and Tanzania. The aircraft returned from Angola to Ukraine via Sudan.¹⁴⁰

As emphasized by the airline and the Ukrainian government, the government of Angola is not subject to an international embargo. They also stated that the cargo delivery was made in accordance with relevant national export controls and international civil aviation rules.¹⁴¹ They noted that they had received no complaints from any party regarding this transaction prior to being contacted by Human Rights Watch.¹⁴² The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense added that its investigation into the matter concluded that “[the] flight route, nature of cargo and time parameters were completely legitimate,” and that “in this case [the] air company was dealing only as a carrier of the cargo.”¹⁴³ Both the airline and the Ukrainian government identified the company that made the transport arrangements for the cargo UCA delivered to Angola (see above).¹⁴⁴

The information regarding the UCA delivery to Angola nevertheless is of interest as it relates to the intended delivery route of the Iranian munitions. It also helps illustrate the complex transport arrangements made for weapons deliveries, the many players involved in one weapons shipment, and the absence of transparency about such transactions. Moreover, media reports suggest that there were some discrepancies regarding cargo declarations at one of the stops. Finally, as will be discussed in the third case study in this report, Angola’s dismal human rights record makes it an inappropriate weapons client.

Flight records show that the UCA aircraft departed Gostomel on September 29, 2001, at 4:17 pm, carrying commercial cargo weighing 2479 kilograms.¹⁴⁵ Ukrainian authorities and UCA informed Human Rights Watch that the cargo consisted of “aircraft spare parts.”¹⁴⁶ They further clarified that this cargo was authorized to be exported by the state-owned Ukrainian arms export company Ukrspetsexport to the government of Angola.¹⁴⁷ Neither the Ukrainian government nor the airline specified the type of aircraft for which spare parts were supplied, but the fact that the sale was made by an arms-export firm and received export authorization, as required for military equipment, indicates that it was for military aircraft. A Ukrainian official independently informed Human Rights Watch that, to his knowledge, the spare parts were for a military aircraft.¹⁴⁸

The UCA plane arrived in Bratislava at 6:27 pm, as noted, and was allowed to leave the following day, September 30, 2001. It departed at 12:27 pm that day, according to the flight records, having onloaded sixteen kilograms of additional commercial cargo.¹⁴⁹ This was a small consignment of signal flares.¹⁵⁰ The goods had been sold by the Slovak company Hermes and authorized for export to Angola.¹⁵¹

The next and final pick-up was at Ovda, Israel, where the UCA plane landed at 3:27 pm on September 30, 2001.¹⁵² There, 2500 kilograms of commercial cargo were onloaded.¹⁵³ This cargo was identified as “impedimenta.”¹⁵⁴ The UCA plane departed from Ovda at 1:02 pm on October 1, 2001. From Ovda the UCA plane traveled to Aswan, Egypt, to refuel,¹⁵⁵ landing at 2:42 pm and departing at 2:15 the following morning.¹⁵⁶

Divergent accounts have emerged regarding what happened on the plane’s next stop, in Mwanza, by Lake Victoria in Tanzania, where flight records indicate it landed at 8:40 am on October 2, 2001, and left at 2:10 pm the next day. Media report from Tanzania said that officials at the airport temporarily halted the UCA plane, registration number UR-UCK, shortly after it landed at Mwanza, on suspicion that it was carrying undeclared weapons cargo.¹⁵⁷ The aircraft was allowed to leave, but some months later a Tanzanian official stated that authorities had indeed discovered undeclared weapons cargo aboard and added that they had only released the plane on orders of top Tanzanian security officials.¹⁵⁸

A different account was offered in the Ukrainian press, which quoted a representative of Ukrainian Cargo Airways as denying that the plane was carrying weapons and instead saying that it only had transport equipment on board.¹⁵⁹ The airline representative reportedly acknowledged that the plane had certain problems in Tanzania, but challenged reports that the crew was detained for questioning.¹⁶⁰

When approached by Human Rights Watch, UCA stated: “The aircraft made [a] technical stop in Mwanza for refueling and crew rest. There [was] no information relating to aircraft detention by Tanzanian authorities. The flight schedule was undisturbed.”¹⁶¹ The Ukrainian authorities responded similarly, adding that they had not been contacted by the Tanzanian authorities in connection with this flight.¹⁶² Despite being asked, neither party addressed the fact that the military cargo was reportedly characterized by the airline at the time as transport equipment.

On its arrival in Luanda, according to UCA, “all the cargo declared for delivery was unloaded and handed over to representatives of the Government of Angola. ”¹⁶³ Flight records show that the plane landed in Luanda at 7:05 pm on October 3, 2001.¹⁶⁴ They do not indicate the time of its departure, with an empty cargo hold, from Luanda to Khartoum, where the UCA plane stopped at 2:40 pm October 4, 2001, and stayed until 4:55 am the next morning, at which point it departed for Borispol airport in Kiev, where it arrived at 12:10 pm on October 5, 2001.¹⁶⁵

As of March 2003, the Slovak criminal investigation remained open. No one had been charged and there had been no new developments in the case for at least one year. Slovak authorities pointed to poor international cooperation as a reason for the slow progress of their investigation. In addition, there was a break in the continuity of the investigation: the police investigator responsible for this investigation left and his replacement had not yet studied the extensive case file. The same situation emerged in the Liberia case above. The turnover among police investigators, seemingly driven by a sense they were overworked and underpaid, only made more difficult the challenge of prosecuting wrongdoers in arms trafficking cases.¹⁶⁶