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Brit Soldiers Jailed for Selling Weapons Smuggled from Iraq

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
The Guardian - Nov 24, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,2216253,00.html

Soldiers jailed for selling smuggled Iraq weapons

by Martin Wainwright

Two soldiers who smuggled stolen guns out of Iraq to sell as souvenirs
were jailed at a court martial yesterday.

The lance corporals from the Yorkshire Regiment drew up a homemade
catalogue of the black market weapons which are thought to have been
smuggled out of Iraq in the fuel tanks of trucks and armoured cars.
Their plan was to make money from easy sales to colleagues in a
battalion which, according to evidence at the court martial in
Catterick barracks, North Yorkshire, was "riddled with drug abuse and
dealing" at the time of the incident three years ago.

Lance Corporal Michael White, 28, was sentenced to 10 years and Lance
Corporal Anthony Creswick, 25, to nine and a half, for selling six
pistols bought from criminals in Basra.

Their unit, the first battalion of the then Duke Of Wellington's
Regiment, served in Basra between October 2004 and April 2005 when the
deals were done. The panel of six officers and senior NCOs heard that
the scam was referred to in code as a "business arrangement" with White
called the "frontman" and Creswick the "quartermaster".

Prosecutor Colonel Nigel Jones said that the plot unravelled when other
soldiers heard rumours and the men panicked. A stash of weapons and
ammunition was hurriedly buried in a wood near Osnabrck barracks in
Germany, which was the smuggling ring's "shop.'

White, who admitted taking cocaine as payment for two pistols, was the
main prosecution witness in the case. Judge Advocate Colin Burn told
him that peddling weapons within a military compound was "just about as
serious as it gets".

As well as the drug deals, pistols were sold for between ,200 (145)
and ,600 (430). They included working weapons and others which had
been put out of commission but then modified to fire live rounds again.

A third lance corporal in the same unit, Brent Campbell, 24, was jailed
for 18 months after admitting buying one of the guns.

He claimed that he had wanted it to frighten off a gang which had been
intimidating his family.

All three soldiers were also dismissed from the army, which sacked
three other members of the smuggling gang a year ago. Two lance
corporals and a private were jailed in December for a total of 12 years
for possession of illegal pistols.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: "It's a shame that the
good work of the Battalion while in Iraq has been overshadowed by this
court martial."

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