Washington Post:
PERUGIA, Italy -- In a hidden corner of Rome's busy Fiumicino Airport,
police dug quietly through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for smuggled
drugs. What they found instead was a catalog of weapons, a clue to something
bigger.
Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail
of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market
transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than
100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.
As the
secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in,
making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.
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