Arsenal of weaponry large enough to sustain an army dissappeared from military base in Italy, an international intrigue is suspected.
Missiles, anti-tank projectiles, Katyusha rockets, kalashnikovs and ammunition stored in the Italian navy’s cave armouries on Santo Stefano, in the La Maddalena archipelago, have dissappeared. The weaponry, enough to kit out an small army, was on a vessel sailing from the former Soviet Union to the war-torn Balkans when it was intercepted by italian military forces in the Channel of Otranto.
The weapons were seized by Italian army and the court of Turin ruled that they should be destroyed. Instead, two months ago the assorted missiles, rockets and kalashnikovs were removed from storage, handed over to the army and taken to Lazio, where they mysteriously vanished.
Meanwhile for the past few days, Tempio Pausania prosecutors, who had begun to investigate the fate of the weapons whether they have gone to Libya or Afghanistan, have been up against a wall of state secrecy. The Prime Minister’s Office has blocked all further inquiries into the weapons’ destination.
What armaments were removed from the military store?
From the start, this was an international intrigue. The James Bond-style plot moved from Ukraine to Croatia with tip-offs to the British and Italian intelligence services and shadowy east European businessmen pulling strings. Alexander Borisovich Zhukov, one of the new Russian oligarchs, ended up in jail. Now, the intrigue has become a mystery. Four Italian army-escorted containers boarded a Saremar ferry from La Maddalena to Palau, and then left from Olbia on a Tirrenia ferry – with 600 passengers – for Civitavecchia.
Are nuclear warheads among the vanished weoponry ?
Santo Stefano was a US nuclear submarine base for thirty-six years before the Americans left in 2008. In the vicinity where the submarine servicing vessel was docked, there is a cave in the rock which was allegedly used to store missiles with nuclear warheads. In those docks the weapons seized in the Adriatic were held, an arsenal of arms of 400 Fagot missiles with fifty firing points, 30,000 AK-47 machine guns, 5,000 Katyusha rockets, 11,000 anti-tank rockets and 32 million rounds of machine gun ammunition. All this was packed away, stacked in neat rows, and listed on a lengthy inventory. The original is held by the court of Turin and the military authorities have copies of the dangerous cargo.
In March 1994, the Malta-registered Jadran Express was taking the weapons to Croatia. The British and Italian intelligence services were tipped off. Volodymir Kulish, head of the Ukrainian secret service, had managed to place a satellite tracking device on board. Signals were picked up by a Royal Navy corvette and an Italian patrol vessel, and the Jadran Express was forced to dock at Taranto. The international plot thickened a few years later quite by chance. The Piedmont-based anti-Mafia directorate discovered a huge business fronted by two companies ostensibly dealing in stationery and traced it back to Ukraine-born businessman Dmitri Streslinsky, CEO of Sintez and Global Technology, the financial and oil holding companies controlled by Alexander Zhukov. Zhukov, who is related to Georgy Zhukhov, the marshal who led the Red Army in the Second World War, and is the father of Dasha, the partner of another oligarch, Roman Abramovich, was arrested, the only one of nine warrants issued to be enforced. In April 2001, Zhukov was taken into custody at Porto Cervo at the villa he had recently purchased for eight billion lire from the Roman construction magnate, Giulio De Angelis, the father of Formula One racing driver Elio. But the captain of the Jadran Express demolished the charges by stating in court that he was not scheduled to stop at any Italian ports. The arms trafficking was offshore and outside Italy’s jurisdiction. Zhukov and the eight other defendants ruled free, and the weapons were ordered to be destroyed.
Vanished Italian Weapons : One can start and win a small war with them
All of the Russian-made weapons had been seized in 1994 by the Italian navy acting on intelligence from British intelligence who had been tracking the vessel they were on following undercover work by a spy.
One Italian military expert who wanted to be remained anonymous informed: ‘With that amount of weaponry you could start and win a small war. It is very odd that they were kept despite an order for them to be destroyed.”
‘The fact that an order of secrecy has been placed on the whole affair is also very intriguing – you have to wonder if the Italian government has helped in the disappearance of these weapons out of Italy.’
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