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Open Democracy
Nov 11 2010
Armenia and Georgia foil latest uranium smuggling plot
Luke Heighton, 10 November 2010
Joint anti-nuclear proliferation operation results in multiple arrests
in Georgia. One year after Fort Hood shootings, US army outlines plans
for radical security overhaul. Somali pirates land largest-ever ransom
payment. All this and more in today's security briefing.
On Monday the Armenian government announced the detention of a man
suspected of supplying weapons-grade uranium to two men arrested
earlier this year in a joint operation between the Armenian and
Georgian security services. Garik Dadayan, who previously served two
and half months of a two-year sentence for a similar offence committed
in 2003, was intercepted following a tip-off by Georgian
investigators. Anonymous investigators told the Guardian they believed
Dadayan had been allowed to keep some of his stash by Georgian border
guards at the time of his original arrest, having bribed his way out
of detention.
Meanwhile, the two men to whom Dadayan is alleged to have supplied 18g
(0.6oz) of highly enriched uranium, and who were arrested in Georgia
in March, have appeared in a closed court in the Georgian capital,
Tblisi. Hrant Ohanyan and Sumbat Tonoyan, both of whom are Armenian,
pleaded guilty to trying to attempting to smuggle the uranium into the
country concealed in a zip-lock plastic bag inside a lead-lined
cigarette case. Ohanyan, a 59-year-old semi-retired physicist, and
63-year-old Tonoyan, a former businessman who had gambled away his
fortune, had attempted to move the uranium from Yerevan to Tblisi by
train, with the intention of selling it for approximately $50,000
(£30,800) per gram, with further, larger sales to follow.
Their client - so they believed - was a Turkish-speaking Muslim acting
on behalf of mysterious `serious people'. In fact he was an undercover
policeman commissioned by Archil Pavlenishvili, head of the
radioactive materials investigations team at the Georgian ministry of
the interior and mastermind of the sting operation. The `buyer' is
understood to have first crossed paths with Tonoyan a few weeks
beforehand, when the latter travelled to Batumi on the Black Sea coast
to look for buyers.
Much to the bemusement of the security officers who had been tracking
them since their departure, once on board the train Ohanyan and
Tonoyan stashed their cargo between two carriages, before getting off
the train once it had crossed in Armenia and taking a taxi to its
final destination, Tblisi. Arriving several hours before the train,
they then zig-zagged across the city to ensure they could not be
followed. Tonoyan and another man, Kaka Kvirikadze - a Georgian
contact with extensive smuggling experience - then collected the
package headed to the Tori hotel, where the `buyer' had reserved a
room for the deal to take place. As soon as the exchange was made,
however, a police team watching from the room next door moved in.
Ohanyan, who was not present, was arrested shortly afterwards as he
slept at another hotel.
This was the third incident of its type to have occurred in Georgia in
the last seven years, and the 21st recorded attempt to smuggle nuclear
materials through Georgia since the break up of the Soviet Union. In
August police in Moldova seized 1.8kg of uranium-238 in the capital,
Chisinau, which thieves were attempting to sell for around 9m euros
(£7.4m), despite it being of no use in building a nuclear weapon.
Commenting on this latest incident, Georgian officials were quick to
describe the operation as an encouraging sign that increased
cooperation between local agencies and the US is leading to increased
arrests. The long history of smuggling in the country means it will
take more than one successful hit for such a claim to be validated.
The authorities' ability or inability to thwart such operations
highlights the country's political and diplomatic woes - its failure
to appease ethnic and religious minorities and its hostile
relationship with Russia, with its broader implications for Russia's
relations with Nato powers. For Boris Volkhonsky, writing for the
Voice of Russia, the plot evidenced Georgia's `very poor control over
its territory', which in turn has allowed it to become a `safe haven'
for both Al Qaeda and Chechen separatists, a long-standing Russian
grievance and common refrain in criticism of the country. From the
other side, meanwhile, the coup will be cited as reason to continue
the US Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative partnership, which under
US oversight bolsters Georgia's police, military and coastguard
capabilities, with perhaps tangential benefits for Georgia's
intelligence and military strength vis-a-vis its still much more
powerful northern neighbour.
US army recommends radical changes to security procedures, closer ties
with intelligence services
A little over a year since the 5 November shootings at the Fort Hood
military base, Texas, which left thirteen people dead and wounded
thirty others, the United States army has released the findings of its
118-page internal follow-on review of force protection policies,
programmes and procedures. Published by the army and the department of
defence, the report calls upon the army to address the ways in which
it protects its soldiers, collects information regarding potential
internal threats, and in particular its working relationship with the
FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The report also recommends that the sharing of information within the
organisation by service personnel must be made easier, having already
identified a number of factors - fear of punishment being among them -
which currently discourage individuals to come forward with their
concerns. It goes on to suggest that the army should continue to
develop a greater knowledge and understanding of what it calls the
"observable indicators for espionage, terrorism and extremism."
To date, it is suggested, the army has implemented or is taking
definitive action on 66 of the DoD's 79 Independent Review Panel
recommendations. These include:
- The development and implementation of a `Threat Awareness and
Reporting Program', centred on identifying and reporting 'insider
threats' and emphasising soldier awareness and reporting.
- The creation of a `Counterintelligence Fusion Cell' and developed
systems to improve information sharing within the army and with other
agencies.
- The development and implementation of the `iWatch' and `iSalute'
programmes. iWatch is described as `a 21st Century version of the
neighborhood watch program [integrating] terrorism prevention and
suspicious activity reporting'. The iSalute programme, meanwhile, is
`an online counter-intelligence reporting system through the army's
main intranet and primary web portal, Army Knowledge Online. Soldiers,
Family members and department of the army employees can now
electronically file reports that will initiate an interview with army
counter-intelligence personnel'.
- The establishment of an Army Personnel Security Investigation Center
of Excellence at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, which oversees an
enhanced screening program, and which now serves as the central
submission and processing point for all army personnel security and
suitability background investigations.
- Increased incident response training capability and leveraged
civilian law enforcement best practices to improve the army's ability
to respond. According to the report, to date, more than 23,000
security force personnel have received additional training in law
enforcement functions, with another 2,700 army law enforcement
personnel at 122 army installations undergoing training in how to
respond to an `active shooter' scenario.
Both the army's report and senior army personnel have stressed that in
their view no single action could have prevented what happened at Ford
Hood a year ago; nevertheless, `in the aggregate, the initiatives
outlined by the army's internal review team will significantly improve
the army's ability to mitigate internal threats, ensure FP [force
protection], enable emergency response and provide care for the
victims and families." Henceforth, military police attempting to stop
similar acts of violence will also be authorized to use jacketed
hollow point ammunition. Hollow point bullets expand upon entering a
target, causing greater fragmentation tissue disruption than normal
ammunition.
An evidentiary hearing into the 5 November shootings, which were
carried out by Major Nidal Hasan, is set to resume on Monday. It has
not yet been decided whether or not Major Hasan will face a
court-martial and a possible death penalty. Members of Congress are
known to be exerting pressure on the department of defence and US
intelligence services to release more information on what they knew
about Major Hasan prior to the shootings, So far, however, these
requests have been resisted on the grounds that any such release could
compromise the trial. The air force, navy and marines have already
released separate reports of their own.
International efforts to curb piracy in the Gulf of Aden failing, says
UN official
Somali pirates are continuing to outpace attempts to crack down on
their activities, despite significant international attempts to stop
them, and repeated warnings to commercial shipping, aid agencies and
independent sailors to steer well clear of Somali waters if at all
possible or face potentially disastrous consequences. According to the
latest International Maritime Organization figures, 438 crew and
passengers and 20 ships are currently being held hostage at sea near
Somalia. A report by the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre released last
month found that in the first nine months of 2010, 44% of 289 piracy
incidents on the world's seas were committed by Somali pirates. That
compares with the same organisation's report of the previous year,
according to which there were some 214 attacks reported between 2008
and 2009 (of which 47 resulted in a hijacking), and a total of 867
ordinary crew members were held hostage by pirates during that period.
Another organisation that monitors Somali pirates' activities,
Ecoterra International, believes more than 25 foreign ships and up to
500 people are currently held hostage.
Speaking at the beginning of the week, Lynn Pascoe, UN
undersecretary-general for political affairs, described how pirates
are taking greater risks and seeking ever-higher ransoms: "As long as
piracy is so lucrative [and] with ransom payments adding up to tens of
millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and other economic
incentives so bleak, the incentives are obvious."
One of the possible reasons for the increase both in the frequency of
attacks and the size of the ransoms demanded is that pirates are said
to be using increasingly larger vessels, allowing them to strike
further and further away from shore, where patrols are also less
frequent. There is evidence that this escalation has been accompanied
by an increasing likelihood of violence and murder, both trends a
response perhaps to the increasing force being brought to bear on
pirates by the world's navies. On Saturday, pirates announced that a
ransom of between $9-10 million had been given to them for a South
Korean supertanker, and there is evidence al-Shabab is becoming
increasingly involved in pirating activities, as it looks to increase
revenues to aid its campaign to wrest control over remaining
government-held territories.
However, Pascoe also said that the situation would be worse "if not
for the very considerable international anti-piracy efforts under
way". Despite the military superiority of patrolling vessels and crew,
encounters with hostage-takers have proved far from uniformly
successful. In a recent incident, EU Navfor warship FS Floreal located
a yacht belonging to a South African yachtsman who refused to
cooperate with pirates who attacked and boarded the vessel. The
Floreal came under fire from the vessel before the yacht ran aground.
After failing in their attempts to remove the three crew members on
board, and with the skipper refusing to leave his vessel. The pirates
left with the remaining two crew members as hostages, however, neither
of whom have since been found.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/security_briefings/101110
From: A. Papazian
Nov 11 2010
Armenia and Georgia foil latest uranium smuggling plot
Luke Heighton, 10 November 2010
Joint anti-nuclear proliferation operation results in multiple arrests
in Georgia. One year after Fort Hood shootings, US army outlines plans
for radical security overhaul. Somali pirates land largest-ever ransom
payment. All this and more in today's security briefing.
On Monday the Armenian government announced the detention of a man
suspected of supplying weapons-grade uranium to two men arrested
earlier this year in a joint operation between the Armenian and
Georgian security services. Garik Dadayan, who previously served two
and half months of a two-year sentence for a similar offence committed
in 2003, was intercepted following a tip-off by Georgian
investigators. Anonymous investigators told the Guardian they believed
Dadayan had been allowed to keep some of his stash by Georgian border
guards at the time of his original arrest, having bribed his way out
of detention.
Meanwhile, the two men to whom Dadayan is alleged to have supplied 18g
(0.6oz) of highly enriched uranium, and who were arrested in Georgia
in March, have appeared in a closed court in the Georgian capital,
Tblisi. Hrant Ohanyan and Sumbat Tonoyan, both of whom are Armenian,
pleaded guilty to trying to attempting to smuggle the uranium into the
country concealed in a zip-lock plastic bag inside a lead-lined
cigarette case. Ohanyan, a 59-year-old semi-retired physicist, and
63-year-old Tonoyan, a former businessman who had gambled away his
fortune, had attempted to move the uranium from Yerevan to Tblisi by
train, with the intention of selling it for approximately $50,000
(£30,800) per gram, with further, larger sales to follow.
Their client - so they believed - was a Turkish-speaking Muslim acting
on behalf of mysterious `serious people'. In fact he was an undercover
policeman commissioned by Archil Pavlenishvili, head of the
radioactive materials investigations team at the Georgian ministry of
the interior and mastermind of the sting operation. The `buyer' is
understood to have first crossed paths with Tonoyan a few weeks
beforehand, when the latter travelled to Batumi on the Black Sea coast
to look for buyers.
Much to the bemusement of the security officers who had been tracking
them since their departure, once on board the train Ohanyan and
Tonoyan stashed their cargo between two carriages, before getting off
the train once it had crossed in Armenia and taking a taxi to its
final destination, Tblisi. Arriving several hours before the train,
they then zig-zagged across the city to ensure they could not be
followed. Tonoyan and another man, Kaka Kvirikadze - a Georgian
contact with extensive smuggling experience - then collected the
package headed to the Tori hotel, where the `buyer' had reserved a
room for the deal to take place. As soon as the exchange was made,
however, a police team watching from the room next door moved in.
Ohanyan, who was not present, was arrested shortly afterwards as he
slept at another hotel.
This was the third incident of its type to have occurred in Georgia in
the last seven years, and the 21st recorded attempt to smuggle nuclear
materials through Georgia since the break up of the Soviet Union. In
August police in Moldova seized 1.8kg of uranium-238 in the capital,
Chisinau, which thieves were attempting to sell for around 9m euros
(£7.4m), despite it being of no use in building a nuclear weapon.
Commenting on this latest incident, Georgian officials were quick to
describe the operation as an encouraging sign that increased
cooperation between local agencies and the US is leading to increased
arrests. The long history of smuggling in the country means it will
take more than one successful hit for such a claim to be validated.
The authorities' ability or inability to thwart such operations
highlights the country's political and diplomatic woes - its failure
to appease ethnic and religious minorities and its hostile
relationship with Russia, with its broader implications for Russia's
relations with Nato powers. For Boris Volkhonsky, writing for the
Voice of Russia, the plot evidenced Georgia's `very poor control over
its territory', which in turn has allowed it to become a `safe haven'
for both Al Qaeda and Chechen separatists, a long-standing Russian
grievance and common refrain in criticism of the country. From the
other side, meanwhile, the coup will be cited as reason to continue
the US Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative partnership, which under
US oversight bolsters Georgia's police, military and coastguard
capabilities, with perhaps tangential benefits for Georgia's
intelligence and military strength vis-a-vis its still much more
powerful northern neighbour.
US army recommends radical changes to security procedures, closer ties
with intelligence services
A little over a year since the 5 November shootings at the Fort Hood
military base, Texas, which left thirteen people dead and wounded
thirty others, the United States army has released the findings of its
118-page internal follow-on review of force protection policies,
programmes and procedures. Published by the army and the department of
defence, the report calls upon the army to address the ways in which
it protects its soldiers, collects information regarding potential
internal threats, and in particular its working relationship with the
FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The report also recommends that the sharing of information within the
organisation by service personnel must be made easier, having already
identified a number of factors - fear of punishment being among them -
which currently discourage individuals to come forward with their
concerns. It goes on to suggest that the army should continue to
develop a greater knowledge and understanding of what it calls the
"observable indicators for espionage, terrorism and extremism."
To date, it is suggested, the army has implemented or is taking
definitive action on 66 of the DoD's 79 Independent Review Panel
recommendations. These include:
- The development and implementation of a `Threat Awareness and
Reporting Program', centred on identifying and reporting 'insider
threats' and emphasising soldier awareness and reporting.
- The creation of a `Counterintelligence Fusion Cell' and developed
systems to improve information sharing within the army and with other
agencies.
- The development and implementation of the `iWatch' and `iSalute'
programmes. iWatch is described as `a 21st Century version of the
neighborhood watch program [integrating] terrorism prevention and
suspicious activity reporting'. The iSalute programme, meanwhile, is
`an online counter-intelligence reporting system through the army's
main intranet and primary web portal, Army Knowledge Online. Soldiers,
Family members and department of the army employees can now
electronically file reports that will initiate an interview with army
counter-intelligence personnel'.
- The establishment of an Army Personnel Security Investigation Center
of Excellence at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, which oversees an
enhanced screening program, and which now serves as the central
submission and processing point for all army personnel security and
suitability background investigations.
- Increased incident response training capability and leveraged
civilian law enforcement best practices to improve the army's ability
to respond. According to the report, to date, more than 23,000
security force personnel have received additional training in law
enforcement functions, with another 2,700 army law enforcement
personnel at 122 army installations undergoing training in how to
respond to an `active shooter' scenario.
Both the army's report and senior army personnel have stressed that in
their view no single action could have prevented what happened at Ford
Hood a year ago; nevertheless, `in the aggregate, the initiatives
outlined by the army's internal review team will significantly improve
the army's ability to mitigate internal threats, ensure FP [force
protection], enable emergency response and provide care for the
victims and families." Henceforth, military police attempting to stop
similar acts of violence will also be authorized to use jacketed
hollow point ammunition. Hollow point bullets expand upon entering a
target, causing greater fragmentation tissue disruption than normal
ammunition.
An evidentiary hearing into the 5 November shootings, which were
carried out by Major Nidal Hasan, is set to resume on Monday. It has
not yet been decided whether or not Major Hasan will face a
court-martial and a possible death penalty. Members of Congress are
known to be exerting pressure on the department of defence and US
intelligence services to release more information on what they knew
about Major Hasan prior to the shootings, So far, however, these
requests have been resisted on the grounds that any such release could
compromise the trial. The air force, navy and marines have already
released separate reports of their own.
International efforts to curb piracy in the Gulf of Aden failing, says
UN official
Somali pirates are continuing to outpace attempts to crack down on
their activities, despite significant international attempts to stop
them, and repeated warnings to commercial shipping, aid agencies and
independent sailors to steer well clear of Somali waters if at all
possible or face potentially disastrous consequences. According to the
latest International Maritime Organization figures, 438 crew and
passengers and 20 ships are currently being held hostage at sea near
Somalia. A report by the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre released last
month found that in the first nine months of 2010, 44% of 289 piracy
incidents on the world's seas were committed by Somali pirates. That
compares with the same organisation's report of the previous year,
according to which there were some 214 attacks reported between 2008
and 2009 (of which 47 resulted in a hijacking), and a total of 867
ordinary crew members were held hostage by pirates during that period.
Another organisation that monitors Somali pirates' activities,
Ecoterra International, believes more than 25 foreign ships and up to
500 people are currently held hostage.
Speaking at the beginning of the week, Lynn Pascoe, UN
undersecretary-general for political affairs, described how pirates
are taking greater risks and seeking ever-higher ransoms: "As long as
piracy is so lucrative [and] with ransom payments adding up to tens of
millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and other economic
incentives so bleak, the incentives are obvious."
One of the possible reasons for the increase both in the frequency of
attacks and the size of the ransoms demanded is that pirates are said
to be using increasingly larger vessels, allowing them to strike
further and further away from shore, where patrols are also less
frequent. There is evidence that this escalation has been accompanied
by an increasing likelihood of violence and murder, both trends a
response perhaps to the increasing force being brought to bear on
pirates by the world's navies. On Saturday, pirates announced that a
ransom of between $9-10 million had been given to them for a South
Korean supertanker, and there is evidence al-Shabab is becoming
increasingly involved in pirating activities, as it looks to increase
revenues to aid its campaign to wrest control over remaining
government-held territories.
However, Pascoe also said that the situation would be worse "if not
for the very considerable international anti-piracy efforts under
way". Despite the military superiority of patrolling vessels and crew,
encounters with hostage-takers have proved far from uniformly
successful. In a recent incident, EU Navfor warship FS Floreal located
a yacht belonging to a South African yachtsman who refused to
cooperate with pirates who attacked and boarded the vessel. The
Floreal came under fire from the vessel before the yacht ran aground.
After failing in their attempts to remove the three crew members on
board, and with the skipper refusing to leave his vessel. The pirates
left with the remaining two crew members as hostages, however, neither
of whom have since been found.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/security_briefings/101110
From: A. Papazian