Photo of the "Jie Shun" by Alex Columb (Vessel Tracker)
Washington Post: A North Korean ship was seized off Egypt with a huge cache of weapons destined for a surprising buyer
Last August, a secret message was passed from Washington to Cairo warning about a mysterious vessel steaming toward the Suez Canal. The bulk freighter named Jie Shun was flying Cambodian colors but had sailed from North Korea, the warning said, with a North Korean crew and an unknown cargo shrouded by heavy tarps.
Armed with this tip, customs agents were waiting when the ship entered Egyptian waters. They swarmed the vessel and discovered, concealed under bins of iron ore, a cache of more than 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. It was, as a United Nations report later concluded, the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
But who were the rockets for? The Jie Shun’s final secret would take months to resolve and would yield perhaps the biggest surprise of all: The buyers were the Egyptians themselves.
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WNU Editor: Unbelievable.
Hat tip to Fred for this link.
1 comment:
What a turn of events. North Korea is competing with the US in the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia to be used no doubt against Yemen. The US no doubt will be really upset if the weapons are to be sent onward to some terrorist group, like maybe ISIS, when they believe such supplying is their domain.
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