CIA weapons for rebels in Syria stolen

Intelligence operatives in Jordan have systematically stolen and sold arms shipped there by the CIA and Saudi Arabia.

AMMAN, Jordan — Weapons shipped into Jordan by the CIA and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to U.S. and Jordanian officials.

Some of the stolen weapons were used in a November shooting that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, FBI officials believe after months of investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The existence of the weapons theft, which ended only months ago after complaints by the U.S. and Saudi governments, is being reported for the first time after a joint investigation by The New York Times and Al Jazeera.

The Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from the weapons sales, using the money to buy expensive SUVs, iPhones and other luxury items, Jordanian officials said.

The theft and resale of the arms — including Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades — have led to a flood of new weapons available on the black arms market. Investigators do not know what became of most of them, but a disparate collection of groups, including criminal networks and rural Jordanian tribes, use the arms bazaars to build their arsenals. Weapons smugglers also buy weapons in the arms bazaars to ship outside the country.

The FBI investigation into the Amman shooting is continuing. But U.S. and Jordanian officials said the investigators think that the weapons a Jordanian police captain, Anwar Abu Zaid, used to gun down two American contractors, two Jordanians and one South African originally had arrived in Jordan intended for the Syrian rebel-training program.

The officials said this finding had come from tracing the serial numbers of the weapons.

Mohammad al-Momani, Jordan’s minister of state for media affairs, said allegations that Jordanian intelligence officers had been involved in any weapons thefts were “absolutely incorrect.”

Representatives of the CIA and FBI declined to comment.

The State Department did not address the allegations directly, but a spokesman said that America’s relationship with Jordan remained solid.