Word: lakhani
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...Lakhani, 68, a Briton born in India, was arrested in New Jersey last week in a joint sting operation by the FBI and the Russian Federal Security Service for trying to sell a shoulder-fired missile to an informant posing as a terrorist. In what appears to be a coincidence, at almost the exact moment the FBI was beaming over Lakhani's arrest, security forces in Saudi Arabia discovered a document indicating that Saudi militants were casing King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh in preparation for an attack on a British target. U.S. officials believe that the militants may have...
...cases, Lakhani's is both more surprising (it happened on U.S. soil) and less menacing (he never came close to either a terrorist or a weapon). According to a criminal complaint filed in Newark federal court last week, Lakhani first came to the FBI's attention in 2001 when an informant posing as the representative of a Somali terrorist group asked about getting a shoulder-fired missile. Lakhani's response: "It can be done." In July, after the FBI had wired $86,500 to Lakhani's alleged suppliers, he met in Moscow with two Russians who inserted themselves into...
...Lakhani turned up at the Wyndham hotel in Elizabeth, N.J., last Tuesday to meet with his supposed buyer and remove the first Igla-S (the same replica) from its packing crate. The FBI was waiting for him. But before making the arrest, they recorded a lengthy conversation in which he allegedly incriminated himself in the bulk missile purchase. When agents finally burst in, Lakhani was so stunned that he stood frozen in the middle of the room...
...insists that Lakhani is a "significant international arms dealer," but the degree of his apparent gullibility (wouldn't an arms kingpin have known something about suppliers and fake weapons, or at least become suspicious about last-minute negotiators?) immediately led to speculation that the bureau had used a drift net to catch a minnow. Indeed, there is no evidence tying Lakhani to any terrorist group (though he did refer to Americans as "bastards" on an FBI tape), nor is there anything to explain why a man who until three years ago owned a clothing business would have been interested...
While the Lakhani case posed no immediate threat to U.S. security, the situation in Saudi Arabia was clearly imminent and volatile. Following the Saudi announcement, British Airways suspended all flights into the country, and the British and American embassies in Riyadh issued fresh alerts to their nationals. The U.S. message read in part, "There is credible information that terrorists have targeted Western aviation interests in Saudi Arabia...