Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Suited and Booted


A former Soviet military-intelligence officer, stranded in Africa by the collapse of his country, turns to gun running and builds a lucrative international business. It is the sort of outfit that thrives on pointless wars in failed, dirt-poor places. But it also plays a part in some bigger conflicts. Its list of past customers includes the world's best-known terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and Colombia's FARC—and Western governments too. Efforts to round up the man at the centre of this web are frustrated, sometimes by bad luck, and sometimes apparently by squabbles in the rich world between those who want to prosecute and those who protect him.

Full story here.

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