N. Korea weapons smugglers left trail around world

BANGKOK — Thai authorities' high-profile inspection of 35 tons of North Korean weapons was nearing completion Friday, as clues emerging around the world shed light on the business of arms trafficking — and the lengths smugglers take to hide their identities.

Two weeks after Thai authorities impounded the aircraft and arrested its five-man crew, the key questions of who organized the shipment and where it was headed remain unanswered.

But a trail of companies and fake addresses from New Zealand to Barcelona has illustrated how the traffickers bounced around the globe to lightly regulated countries to disguise their movements. Over the past few months, they created a complex web of holding companies that facilitated the flight in an apparent effort to evade U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

The Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane was intercepted during a Dec. 12 refueling stop in Bangkok, thanks to a tip from the United States. Its crew — four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus — has denied any knowledge of arms aboard the plane, which Thai authorities say included explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and components for surface-to-air missiles.

Pending more investigations, a Thai court Friday ordered the crew members to remain in prison 12 more days.

Police Col. Supisarn Bhaddinarinath, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division, said in a telephone interview that investigators expect to finish their report on the types of weapons seized "within a week." The crew has been charged with illegal arms possession, but the charges are expected to be stiffened once the investigation wraps up, he said.

The plane's chief pilot insisted in an interview published Friday that the aircraft's final destination was Kiev, Ukraine, though arms trafficking experts published a report last week saying it was bound for Iran. Thai authorities have said there is no evidence to support that assertion.

"We were to fly to Ukraine," the pilot, Ilyas Isakov of Kazakhstan, told Russian news agencies ITAR-Tass and RIA Novosti in response to written questions. "I don't know what the cargo owners intended to do next, but we were hired to fly it to Kiev's Borispil airport."

He said the crew was hired by a Ukrainian air freighter called Aviatek to pick up 35.8 tons of cargo in Pyongyang, North Korea — which included 25 tons of oil-drilling equipment and other cargo in sealed wooden boxes. He said the flight path included refueling stops in Bangkok and Sri Lanka.

It was not immediately clear how Aviatek fit into the network of companies linked to the plane's journey.