Lethal sugar bombs
N. Korea weapons in ship sweet sacks
A North Korean captain tried to kill himself and his 35man crew “rioted” when Panamanian authorities stopped their arms-smuggling ship carrying sophisticated ballistic missile equipment hidden under tons of brown sugar.
The violent showdown at sea occurred when the ship, en route from Havana to North Korea, was seized on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli said yesterday.
The 14,000ton Chong Chon Gang had long been suspected as an international arms smuggler, security experts said.
But it was stopped near the port of Manzanillo because Panamanian authorities wanted to inspect it for drugs.
The captain violently resisted, suffered a heart attack and then tried to commit suicide, Martinelli said.
The crew had to be subdued and arrested after they tried to cut cables on the ship’s cranes so its cargo couldn’t be offloaded. They also refused to raise the ship’s anchor, so the Panamanians had to cut it loose to move the ship to land where the vessel could be inspected.
Late Monday, the Panamanians found what Martinelli called un declared military cargo that appeared to include missiles and nonconventional arms in one of the five cargo holds.
He posted a photo of some of the contraband, and it was identified by the military expertise firm IHS Jane’s as RSN75 Fan Song firecontrol radar.
That is used to guide Sovietera SA2 surfacetoair missiles to hit their targets.
What Cuba and North Korea, two of the last hardline Communist states, were up to was unclear.
One possibility is that Cuba was helping North Korea improve its airdefense system. A second theory is that Cuba was sending the radar to North Korea to have it upgraded and was paying for the North’s technical help with sugar, IHS Jane’s said.
Panamanian officials said they were inspecting all of the cargo for more weaponry. But since the ship was carrying more than 250,000 sacks of sugar, that might take a week, they said.