Monzer al-Kassar

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Monzer al-Kassar (born in Nabek, Syria in 1945), also known as the "Prince of Marbella" is an international arms dealer, and an accused terrorist. He has resided in Spain since 1984. He is currently detained by the Spanish government, on charges of aiding terrorists and money laundering, among others.

[edit] Biography

The son of a supporter of Hafez Assad, the late dictator of Syria and father of Syria's current president, Bashar, Monzer al-Kassar had links to the highest echelons of the Syrian government. His father, Mohamed al-Kassar was Syrian ambassador to India and later Canada and it was in Moncton, New Brunswick that Monzer obtained a private pilot's license in 1974.

Al-Kassar became an arms dealer in the "early 1970s", according to him, when the government of Yemen asked him to buy rifles and pistols from Poland for them (it is alleged that those arms were then sent to various terror groups).

In 1972, he was arrested in Copenhagen for selling hashish. He then moved to the United Kingdom.

In either 1974 or 1977 (sources conflict), al-Kassar was arrested and jailed in the UK for selling hashish.

In 1984, al-Kassar was expelled from the UK for drug and arms trafficking; he then moved to Marbella, Spain, where he has lived until the present time.

The Spanish government alleges that in 1985, al-Kassar sold arms to the hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, and that afterwards he flew the hijackers' leader, Abu Abbas, to safety in one his private airplanes. Al-Kassar has denied the charge.

In 1987, investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal found that al-Kassar had been paid 1.5 million pounds by someone in the U.S. government to sell arms to Nicaraguan Contras.

In 1992, al-Kassar made arms sales in the millions of dollars to Croatia, Bosnia and Somalia, violating United Nations arms embargoes to all three countries.

That same year, al-Kassar obtained an Argentine passport, with the alleged plan to move there, possibly with the assistance of then-president Carlos Menem, whose parents were from the same town in Syria as those of al-Kassar, and who may have been a relative.

Also in 1992, the Spanish government arrested him for his alleged earlier involvement in the Achille Lauro hijacking, along with "falsification of documents" and "possession of illegal weapons and vehicles". He spent more than a year in jail before being released on bail. The trial came in 1995, and he was found not guilty on all charges.

In 2000, al-Kassar was indicted in Argentina for "obtaining documents under false pretences" for his earlier obtaining of an Argentine passport.

In July 2006, the government of Iraq placed him at #26 on their "most wanted" list, calling him "one of the main sources of financial and logistics support" for the Iraqi insurgency.

In June 2007,Spain arrested al-Kassar again, this time on behalf of the United States government, which charged him with conspiring to kill Americans, supplying terrorists, obtaining anti-aircraft missiles and money laundering.^[1]

On June 13, 2008, the U.S. Embassy in Spain reported that al-Kassar had been extradited extradition to the United States for trial.^[2]