By It will be interesting to see if these arms smugglers ever do get convicted of anything, my guess is they will not:
Thai prosecutors are reported to have dropped charges against the five-man crew of an aircraft carrying 35 tons of weapons from North Korea that was intercepted in Bangkok last December.
The weapons were being airlifted in breach of United Nations Security Council resolution 1874, banning arms exports from the Communist state in response to its nuclear and long-range missile tests.
A spokesman from the Attorney General’s
Office, says the five men–four Kazakhs and a Belarussian–will be deported to face prosecution in their home countries but did not say when they would be deported.
He told reporters Thursday that Belarus and Kazakhstan have contacted the Thai foreign ministry, indicating that they wanted these suspects to be investigated in their countries. [RTT News]
It looks like the effort to make this incident go down the memory hole has begun.
12:05 pm on February 11th, 2010 1
Yet the goods never arrived at their destination. That has to be a good thing (as Martha Stewart would have said).
I doubt all the publicity has been good for those wanting to stop the arms smuggling though. Perhaps better to let them through than suffer any reprecussions.
Since politicians are born without backbones, I suspect that will be the case in the future.
6:05 pm on February 26th, 2010 2
North Korea's latest "rice export" to the Republic of Congo was contaminated with an unacceptably high level of T-55 tank parts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8539408.stm
Do ya think a North Korean rice export was the first warning sign here?