June 9,
2008: The United States has persuaded
Spain to extradite Syrian gunrunner Monzer al Kassar. For over 30 years, Kassar
has been supplying weapons to terrorists and rebels around the world. Recently,
the U.S. set up a sting operation that obtained compelling evidence of Kassar's
guilt. Although Kassar claimed he could not receive a fair trial in the U.S.
because he was an Arab, Spain was glad
to be rid of him. Kassar thought he was safe in Spain, because he had never
done any dirty work there.
The U.S.
sting operation had Kassar offering to sell weapons to Colombian terror organization
FARC. A similar sting operation was used to catch Russian gunrunner Viktor Bout
in Thailand last year. But then Bout
began calling in favors from contacts in the Russian government, resulting in a
tug of war between U.S. and Russian diplomats. The end of this situation is
still unclear.
