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The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
July 21, 2012 Saturday
Final Edition
U.K. dealer jailed for plan to sell missiles
Reuters
LONDON
A British arms dealer was jailed on Friday for trying to buy
surface-toair missiles from North Korea to sell them to the former
Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
British prosecutors described Michael Ranger as an established
international arms dealer who used a company registered in Hong Kong
under the name of his girlfriend to organize illegal arms deals
between the two countries.
E-mail correspondence read out in court showed that Ranger had boasted
to his arms supplier in North Korea that he had been a guest of the
Azeri government and was chauffeured in a luxury limousine during a
visit to the country to discuss arms sales.
Azerbaijan, an oilproducing Caspian Sea nation bordering Iran, is
under an international arms embargo following a 1990s ethnic conflict
in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Britain's Crown Prosecution Service said Ranger intended to evade the
embargo by promoting the supply of hand-held surface-to-air missiles
from North Korea to Azerbaijan, as well as Beretta pistols from the
United States.
He was jailed for three and a half years.
"Ranger's dealings with Azerbaijan were not only illegal, but
potentially very dangerous," the state prosecuting service said in a
statement.
"Arms embargoes are in place for a reason and those who seek to ignore
them in the hope of lining their own pocket should understand that
they are liable to prosecution in the criminal courts."
Armenian-backed forces wrested Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly
Armenianpopulated enclave inside Azerbaijan, from Azeri control after
the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
A ceasefire was reached in 1994 after an estimated 30,000 people had
been killed and another one million had been driven from their homes.
July 21, 2012 Saturday
Final Edition
U.K. dealer jailed for plan to sell missiles
Reuters
LONDON
A British arms dealer was jailed on Friday for trying to buy
surface-toair missiles from North Korea to sell them to the former
Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
British prosecutors described Michael Ranger as an established
international arms dealer who used a company registered in Hong Kong
under the name of his girlfriend to organize illegal arms deals
between the two countries.
E-mail correspondence read out in court showed that Ranger had boasted
to his arms supplier in North Korea that he had been a guest of the
Azeri government and was chauffeured in a luxury limousine during a
visit to the country to discuss arms sales.
Azerbaijan, an oilproducing Caspian Sea nation bordering Iran, is
under an international arms embargo following a 1990s ethnic conflict
in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Britain's Crown Prosecution Service said Ranger intended to evade the
embargo by promoting the supply of hand-held surface-to-air missiles
from North Korea to Azerbaijan, as well as Beretta pistols from the
United States.
He was jailed for three and a half years.
"Ranger's dealings with Azerbaijan were not only illegal, but
potentially very dangerous," the state prosecuting service said in a
statement.
"Arms embargoes are in place for a reason and those who seek to ignore
them in the hope of lining their own pocket should understand that
they are liable to prosecution in the criminal courts."
Armenian-backed forces wrested Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly
Armenianpopulated enclave inside Azerbaijan, from Azeri control after
the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
A ceasefire was reached in 1994 after an estimated 30,000 people had
been killed and another one million had been driven from their homes.