The latest UN Monitoring Group report on Somalia is out. BBC News reports that Eritrea is accused of sending the ex-ICU large quantities of weapons aboard a chartered Boeing 707. Looking up the report, it turns out to be 9G-OAL, serial no. 19350, registered to a Ghanaian firm, Aerogem Aviation. Aerogem was contacted by the…
Read More Ex-Viktor Bout Aircraft Running Guns to SomaliaNot long ago, the European Union added a whole chunk of dodgy Moldovan airlines to its flight-safety blacklist after ramp checks showed their aircraft were unsafe. Now, we have reports that the Moldovans have taken the logical next step and drained the swamp, by revoking the AOCs of the companies in question. It’s bye bye…
Read More Firedumped: A Cast of ThousandsDoug Farah‘s book on Viktor Bout is out. You can read an excerpt in this month’s Men’s Vogue, which is certainly a fittingly Hunter Thompson-esque scene for him, and an interview. Salient points include this: I think one of the most startling moments for me was when we were talking to Treasury Department people doing…
Read More Book alert: Doug Farah vs Viktor BoutThe Dallas Observer reports on Richard Chichakli’s lawsuit against the feds, and also runs his reply. Essentially, the court threw out his case, but good. The Observer also gets the honour of Chichakli comments spam – like this blog and Eurotrib, a sockpuppet calling itself “Graceland” rocked up to claim that he’s innocent, on the…
Read More Bout-Chichakli updateI can’t help thinking that if this LA Times story is accurate, those BGIA planes need a searching. In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda’s command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network’s operatives are raising substantial sums from…
Read More Just another planeload of cashFlying from Sharjah to Bagram AFB today is an aircraft operating for “British Gulf International Company” as opposed to British Gulf International Airlines, using the ICAO code BGI rather than BGK. Why should this be interesting? Well, back in the beginning in 2003, BGIA was supposed to be a company from Sao Tome that had…
Read More The airline that wasn’t is back“Whoever dared paint markings on a plane’s wing was a swine,” said one of Pierre Clostermann’s comrades the night of the 8th of May, 1945. Latest reports from Sudan suggest you can do pretty well painting them out, too. The Sudanese government has been caught using various Antonov-26 aircraft to bomb villages in Darfur, having…
Read More Desert ViktoryLong-time readers of our series on Viktor Bout may remember the Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor’s report which implicated various people in Sierra Leone in terrorist financing. We’ve been interested for a long time in West Africa, and the links between Charles Taylor’s regime and Al-Qa’ida, not to mention the missing 727 case. One of the…
Read More TYR Exclusive: Interview with Paddy McKayHow did I miss this? Perhaps through not reading the Kazakh press. A clutch of airlines were kicked off the Kazakh registry in October, including the storied GST Aero. (Gcached version here.) The story also mentions Phoenix Aviation, not sure why as it’s not a UN-registry outfit, and Reem Air. At the same time, Moldova…
Read More GST Aero DumpedNot a song-title title, and not really a jet – an Antonov-26 instead. Via AllAfrica.com, we learn that a plane hitherto thought to have been stolen has been seized in Beni, Province Orientale, DRC on the instructions of Interpol. Le Phare of Kinshasa reports that the aircraft was operated by an ex-Soviet crew led by…
Read More Interpol and a Mystery Jet