Russian Prison Connections Could Lead to Nuclear Smuggling
By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Islamist terrorists and criminal organizations operating in the former Soviet Union are forging partnerships that could be helping terrorists living in the West to acquire Russian nuclear materials, two organized-crime experts said here yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 20).
Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the two American University researchers refused to provide many sensitive details about the specific nuclear-smuggling cases they have been studying.
They spoke of “complex” links between terrorism and organized crime in the former Soviet Union, however, and stressed the importance of European prisons as a place where terrorists meet organized-crime figures and hatch cooperative plans.
“There needs to be much more understanding of what’s going on in prison,” said Louise Shelley, director of the university’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Center.
Complex networks of diverse, cooperating groups appear to be smuggling highly enriched uranium and other materials regularly out of Russia and into Western Europe, said Shelley and colleague Robert Orttung, an associate research professor at the center.
In smuggling operations that have been detected in progress, Shelley said, nuclear materials typically have been transported “thousands of miles” before detection and have been passed along via a cooperative network that makes it difficult to discern an overall organization. The materials’ movement, she said, follows established Caucasus routes for more mundane smuggling operations.
“There is little understanding of the actors involved or the target destinations of these [nuclear] materials,” Shelley said. “There is a market for small amounts of these materials, and different groups are seeking these.”
The destinations and quantities involved suggest the recipients are Western-based terrorists rather than “rogue states,” Shelley said. “You’re looking at a route that is going from central parts of Russia through the Caucasus and out towards a Western destination,” she said.
Asked repeatedly about the specific sources and destinations in the nuclear-smuggling incidents they studied, the researchers indicated they knew but could not reveal the information.
The researchers suggested ties made in prison between organized crime and terrorism practitioners could be a major factor behind the operations.
“The prisons in Russia, as anywhere else in the world, are a very useful meeting place for different networks,” Orttung said.
The common conception that terrorists use criminal activity to finance attacks, Shelley said, fails to convey the complexity and scope of terrorism-organized crime ties. “These links are much, much more complex,” Shelley said.
For example, she said, “Often, criminals do have a political sense. … They may have shared enemies that they share with the terrorists, and therefore they’re motivated by a shared-enemy perspective.”
Orttung described the researchers’ study of the vulnerabilities of nuclear facilities in the Ural region of Chelyabinsk, Russia, which he said demonstrate the plausibility of organized-crime involvement in terrorist nuclear smuggling. In 1998, employees of a nuclear facility in Chelyabinsk were foiled in a plot to steal weapon-usable material.
“Extremist recruiters” are at work in the Chelyabinsk population, said Orttung, and nuclear workers are drawn from the same population. Some officials in the region are corrupt, he said, and drug dealers around the nuclear sites are connected, via Tajik groups, to terrorist-tied drug sources in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, he said, the Chelyabinsk population includes ex-convicts who have forged ties with terrorists while in prison.
The researchers said the United States should take regional crime groups into consideration when working on nuclear-security and nonproliferation projects in Russia. Shelley said Washington invests heavily in security technology in such operations but has no “consistent analysis” of the “crime and terrorism challenge to nuclear materials” — failing, for example, to screen subcontractors on U.S.-funded Russian nuclear projects.
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Islamist terrorists and criminal organizations operating in the former Soviet Union are forging partnerships that could be helping terrorists living in the West to acquire Russian nuclear materials, two organized-crime experts said here yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 20).
Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the two American University researchers refused to provide many sensitive details about the specific nuclear-smuggling cases they have been studying.
They spoke of “complex” links between terrorism and organized crime in the former Soviet Union, however, and stressed the importance of European prisons as a place where terrorists meet organized-crime figures and hatch cooperative plans.
“There needs to be much more understanding of what’s going on in prison,” said Louise Shelley, director of the university’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Center.
Complex networks of diverse, cooperating groups appear to be smuggling highly enriched uranium and other materials regularly out of Russia and into Western Europe, said Shelley and colleague Robert Orttung, an associate research professor at the center.
In smuggling operations that have been detected in progress, Shelley said, nuclear materials typically have been transported “thousands of miles” before detection and have been passed along via a cooperative network that makes it difficult to discern an overall organization. The materials’ movement, she said, follows established Caucasus routes for more mundane smuggling operations.
“There is little understanding of the actors involved or the target destinations of these [nuclear] materials,” Shelley said. “There is a market for small amounts of these materials, and different groups are seeking these.”
The destinations and quantities involved suggest the recipients are Western-based terrorists rather than “rogue states,” Shelley said. “You’re looking at a route that is going from central parts of Russia through the Caucasus and out towards a Western destination,” she said.
Asked repeatedly about the specific sources and destinations in the nuclear-smuggling incidents they studied, the researchers indicated they knew but could not reveal the information.
The researchers suggested ties made in prison between organized crime and terrorism practitioners could be a major factor behind the operations.
“The prisons in Russia, as anywhere else in the world, are a very useful meeting place for different networks,” Orttung said.
The common conception that terrorists use criminal activity to finance attacks, Shelley said, fails to convey the complexity and scope of terrorism-organized crime ties. “These links are much, much more complex,” Shelley said.
For example, she said, “Often, criminals do have a political sense. … They may have shared enemies that they share with the terrorists, and therefore they’re motivated by a shared-enemy perspective.”
Orttung described the researchers’ study of the vulnerabilities of nuclear facilities in the Ural region of Chelyabinsk, Russia, which he said demonstrate the plausibility of organized-crime involvement in terrorist nuclear smuggling. In 1998, employees of a nuclear facility in Chelyabinsk were foiled in a plot to steal weapon-usable material.
“Extremist recruiters” are at work in the Chelyabinsk population, said Orttung, and nuclear workers are drawn from the same population. Some officials in the region are corrupt, he said, and drug dealers around the nuclear sites are connected, via Tajik groups, to terrorist-tied drug sources in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, he said, the Chelyabinsk population includes ex-convicts who have forged ties with terrorists while in prison.
The researchers said the United States should take regional crime groups into consideration when working on nuclear-security and nonproliferation projects in Russia. Shelley said Washington invests heavily in security technology in such operations but has no “consistent analysis” of the “crime and terrorism challenge to nuclear materials” — failing, for example, to screen subcontractors on U.S.-funded Russian nuclear projects.
posted by Marko at 12/14/2005 07:49:00 AM
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