A Syrian native whom US prosecutors called one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers for decades was sentenced to 30 years in prison yesterday for conspiring to sell weapons to Colombian rebels.
Monzer al-Kassar, 63, a longtime resident of Spain known as the “Prince of Marbella” for his lifestyle in the glitzy seaside town, was convicted in November of agreeing to sell millions of dollars of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Calling Kassar a “sophisticated person” whose main motivation was to make money, US District Judge Jed Rakoff said he and his right-hand man, Felipe Moreno Godoy, could not escape the “overwhelming” videotaped evidence of the weapons deal that turned out to be a US-backed sting operation.
They agreed to sell “huge quantities of serious weapons to what they believed was a terrorist organization who would use these weapons, amongst other things, to kill Americans and wreak havoc,” the judge said.
Moreno Godoy, a 60-year-old Chilean, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
A federal jury convicted Kassar of masterminding the deal that included 15 surface-to-air missiles, and thousands of assault and sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers for a profit of US$1 million.
Prosecutors said he made the deal knowing FARC would use the weapons against US helicopters and citizens to dissuade US efforts to disrupt the cocaine trade.
During the sentencing, Kassar asked for leniency by quoting Jesus Christ, the Koran and an old Arabic poem before saying he was not “against Americans, America or against any other kind of nations.”
The prosecution case was based largely on evidence gathered by two undercover operatives who posed as FARC arms buyers and videotaped negotiations in Spain with Kassar and Moreno.
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Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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