The New York District Attorney General’s Office has formally accused a Swedish citizen of making arms sale agreements with an undercover agent posing as a FARC member, Spanish news agency EFE reported Monday.
According to the accusing body, Paul Mardirossian planned to sell arms, including AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition and grenades, to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent posing as a FARC member, in exchange for receiving 100 kilos of cocaine, with suspected intent to traffic the drug.
Mardirossian was arrested in Panama on April 27 and handed over to U.S. courts last Friday, in order to stand before a New York judge on Monday, where he was charged for crimes related to “narco-terrorism,” according to the prosecution.
Specific charges included conspiracy to participate in narco-terrorism, conspiracy and intent to provide material to support a foreign terrorist organization, attempting to import five kilos or more of cocaine and money laundering.
Apparently, the Swede had met with the agent, who he believed to be a FARC member, in various countries around the world over the course of the past year in order to complete the agreements.
Mardirossian had closed the deals “knowing that these arms would be utilized to cause injury to U.S. citizens,” Federal Judge Preet Bharara explained in a report, stating that the agent had informed the Swedish drug trafficker that the arms would be used to attack a U.S. military base.
In the same report, DEA agent Derek Maltz stated that the detention of Mardirossian “once again illustrates the dangerous connection between drug traffickers at a global level and the networks of terrorists that want to cause injury to innocent people in the United States.”
