Yemen key transit hub for Hamas arms: leaked memos

WASHINGTON saw Yemen as a key transit point for arms flowing to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and the Gaza Strip via Sudan, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

"We understand a significant volume of arms shipments to Hamas make the short 24-hour transit across the Red Sea from Yemen to Sudan," a July 2009 memo from the US embassy in Saana said.

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Yemen key transit hub for Hamas arms: leaked memos
Source: AFP - www.google.com/hostednews
By Paul Handley (AFP) – Tuesday, 07 December 2010:

(RIYADH) - Washington saw Yemen as a key transit point for arms flowing to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and the Gaza Strip via Sudan, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

"We understand a significant volume of arms shipments to Hamas make the short 24-hour transit across the Red Sea from Yemen to Sudan," a July 2009 memo from the US embassy in Saana said.

"These shipments usually transit in small groups of flagged and unflagged dhows" -- small wooden ships -- that hide by mixing with other similar vessels in busy harbours or in coastal mangroves, according to the document.

"The weapons are transported by boat across the Red Sea to landing points in Sudan ... Once landed, we assess that the goods are transported north by car through Sudan."

Weapons one group smuggled to Gaza included rockets, handguns, anti-armour rocket-propelled grenades, and anti-aircraft guns, the memo said.

It said the US was asking Sanaa for permission to conduct surveillance over Yemen's coastal sea using helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles to track the arms-smuggling dhows.

"In a recent case, sparse intelligence and a dhow's use of Yemeni territorial waters allowed a known shipment of arms probably bound for Gaza to transit undetected in international waters past a searching US warship," it said.

The same document said Yemen was a departure point for arms going to Somalia and other east African countries, and to Saudi Arabia as well.

Washington had information on a Yemen-based smugglers who were sending arms to African buyers, who possibly sold them on to Al-Qaeda-associated groups like Somalia's Al-Shabab rebels.

US embassy documents also spoke of the "robust black market" for weapons in Yemen.

One of the biggest worries for the US officials was the possibility that shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles could be obtained on the Yemen market.

In a cable from January 2010, US officials expressed concerns about Yemen's planned purchase of 30,000 assault rifles and ammunition from Bulgaria "given the unstable situation in Yemen and the potential for proliferation of small arms."

One month earlier, another memo spoke of worries that Yemen's defence ministry planned to buy a shipment of small arms and heavy artillery ammunition, sniper rifles, anti-aircraft guns and howitzers from a Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic, who was on a UN travel ban list.

The embassy said it worried that the weapons could be diverted to the black market.

But a 2007 cable suggested Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh took a casual view toward the arms black market, and could benefit from it himself.

In the middle of a meeting with the White House's top counter-terrorism advisor, Frances Townsend, Saleh unexpectedly invited in known arms dealer Faris Manaa.

"If he does not behave properly, you can take him... back to Washington in Townsend's plane or to Guantanamo," Saleh joked with the Americans.