Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi by Kenneth R. Timmerman Page B
Book: Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi by Kenneth R. Timmerman
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Authors: Kenneth R. Timmerman
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whatever they could find. The impounded containers included SA-7 and SA-24 MANPADS, French-made MILAN antitank missiles, AK-47s, Belgian -made FAL assault rifles, Dragunov sniper rifles, Soviet machine guns, RPG-7 launchers, antitank recoilless rifles, mortars, 40 kg of Semtex plastic explosive, and a wide variety of ammunition, grenades, rockets, and mortar rounds. (See appendix II for a full inventory.)
The UN experts report insisted that the containers had been “sealed in Misrata and were still sealed when they were seized by the Lebanese authorities.” However, photographs released by the Lebanese army showed half-empty containers stacked haphazardly with crates of weapons, as if they had been looted.
“I would say certain items were removed by the Lebanese at the request of the U.S. government so we were not more embarrassed than we already were,” a senior U.S. official with access to intelligence reporting on the Letfallah seizure told me.
What items might have been removed? According to initial reports that surfaced in Arabic language newspapers in Beirut, the Letfallah II was carrying 100 Stinger missiles, and may have been intending to offload them at night onto dinghies on a deserted beach north of Tripoli in the rugged Akkar region of northern Lebanon bordering Syria. The Arabic-language reports estimated the street value of the weapons on board the Letfallah II at $60 million. 7
The Akkar region was a well-known source of illegal weapons for smugglers supplying the Free Syrian Army, my sources say. Among the best known of these was a Lebanese man named Yehya Jassem al-Dandashi, aka Abu Maasam, who worked out of the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh.
Abu Maasam was arrested well after this incident and charged with supplying arms to the Free Syrian Army. His arrest made news because Sunni supporters blocked traffic in Tripoli demanding his release. And they won. 8
When the UN experts finally traveled to Lebanon in late December 2012—a full seven months after the Letfallah II seizure—they found some of the weapons were “damaged or missing components,” making them inoperable. They found SA-7s without batteries, open weapons crates, broken weapons, and ammunition for weapons that were apparently missing. “The Panel concludes that this materiel was not prepared and shipped by experienced or qualified personnel, or that it was done in haste,” their March 2013 report states. 9
“The Qataris paid for that shipment,” a U.S. official who was on the ground in Libya at the time the Letfallah II set sail for Lebanon and had access to the intelligence, told me. “The Qataris were there with a lot of money. They were throwing money around like crazy. You’d see signs up everywhere in Tripoli seeking help for ‘our brothers’ in Syria. They were doing weapons collection to send over there, separate from the U.S. effort.” 10
The coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts insisted that the Lebanese authorities showed them no Stingers as part of the confiscated Letfallah II shipment, only ten SA-7b rounds with one gripstock and six batteries, and two SA-24 rounds, the most advanced MANPADS currently made by Russia. (The gripstock is the guts of a shoulder-fired missile. It attaches beneath the missile container and includes the targeting electronics package, the trigger, and the thermal battery.)
“I am sure we saw everything,” said Salim Raad, describing the panel’s inspection of the cargo in December 2012. “There were no Stingers on board the Letfallah ,” he told me. Raad left the panel not long after we spoke. 11
Was this just one more story where nonexpert journalists and excitable locals called every shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile a Stinger?
My sources say that Egyptian customs broke the seal on “one of the twelve containers containing arms” during the ship’s stopover in Alexandria, and tipped off colleagues in Lebanon who called on the navy for assistance.
So was it
The UN experts report insisted that the containers had been “sealed in Misrata and were still sealed when they were seized by the Lebanese authorities.” However, photographs released by the Lebanese army showed half-empty containers stacked haphazardly with crates of weapons, as if they had been looted.
“I would say certain items were removed by the Lebanese at the request of the U.S. government so we were not more embarrassed than we already were,” a senior U.S. official with access to intelligence reporting on the Letfallah seizure told me.
What items might have been removed? According to initial reports that surfaced in Arabic language newspapers in Beirut, the Letfallah II was carrying 100 Stinger missiles, and may have been intending to offload them at night onto dinghies on a deserted beach north of Tripoli in the rugged Akkar region of northern Lebanon bordering Syria. The Arabic-language reports estimated the street value of the weapons on board the Letfallah II at $60 million. 7
The Akkar region was a well-known source of illegal weapons for smugglers supplying the Free Syrian Army, my sources say. Among the best known of these was a Lebanese man named Yehya Jassem al-Dandashi, aka Abu Maasam, who worked out of the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh.
Abu Maasam was arrested well after this incident and charged with supplying arms to the Free Syrian Army. His arrest made news because Sunni supporters blocked traffic in Tripoli demanding his release. And they won. 8
When the UN experts finally traveled to Lebanon in late December 2012—a full seven months after the Letfallah II seizure—they found some of the weapons were “damaged or missing components,” making them inoperable. They found SA-7s without batteries, open weapons crates, broken weapons, and ammunition for weapons that were apparently missing. “The Panel concludes that this materiel was not prepared and shipped by experienced or qualified personnel, or that it was done in haste,” their March 2013 report states. 9
“The Qataris paid for that shipment,” a U.S. official who was on the ground in Libya at the time the Letfallah II set sail for Lebanon and had access to the intelligence, told me. “The Qataris were there with a lot of money. They were throwing money around like crazy. You’d see signs up everywhere in Tripoli seeking help for ‘our brothers’ in Syria. They were doing weapons collection to send over there, separate from the U.S. effort.” 10
The coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts insisted that the Lebanese authorities showed them no Stingers as part of the confiscated Letfallah II shipment, only ten SA-7b rounds with one gripstock and six batteries, and two SA-24 rounds, the most advanced MANPADS currently made by Russia. (The gripstock is the guts of a shoulder-fired missile. It attaches beneath the missile container and includes the targeting electronics package, the trigger, and the thermal battery.)
“I am sure we saw everything,” said Salim Raad, describing the panel’s inspection of the cargo in December 2012. “There were no Stingers on board the Letfallah ,” he told me. Raad left the panel not long after we spoke. 11
Was this just one more story where nonexpert journalists and excitable locals called every shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile a Stinger?
My sources say that Egyptian customs broke the seal on “one of the twelve containers containing arms” during the ship’s stopover in Alexandria, and tipped off colleagues in Lebanon who called on the navy for assistance.
So was it
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