Iran native Alwar Pouryan was one of seven men charged in the case, and one of two naturalized Americans. The other was Israel-born Oded Orbach, according to federal prosecutors in New York City. Both men were arrested in February in Bucharest, Romania, and are being held there pending extradition to the United States.
The men were not actually in contact with the Taliban. They were unknowingly dealing with undercover US drug agents. Those agents pretended to be Taliban and said they wanted to market drugs for funds to buy weapons with which to kill US troops. Orbach and Pouryan are accused of willingly helping a scheme they thought would kill American troops.
Aside from Orbach and Pouryan, five others, all Africans, were arrested in Monrovia, Liberia. Those five have already been transferred to the United States. They all entered not-guilty pleas and were ordered held pending further proceedings.
The charges stem from a sting operation conducted by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in which informants posed as representatives of the Taliban and negotiated arrangements for the planned drug and weapons deals with the accused conspirators in meetings in West Africa and Eastern Europe.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Federal District Court in New York, one conspirator is said to have told the DEA informants the group could obtain heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, antitank missiles, grenade launchers, night vision equipment, sniper rifles and AK-47 assault rifles.
Pouryan and Orbach stand accused of conspiring to provide surface-to-air missiles to the Taliban and to provide material support to terrorists. As part of the sting operation, an informant disguised as a Taliban representative explained that the missiles were needed to protect the Taliban’s heroin labs from potential attacks by American Cobra and Blackhawk helicopters.
According to Preet Bharara, the US attorney in New York, the defendants “were prepared to provide millions of dollars in dangerous narcotics and lethal weapons to men they believed represented the Taliban. This alleged effort to arm and enrich the Taliban,” Bharara told The New York Times, “is the latest example of the dangers of an interconnected world in which terrorists and drug runners can link up across continents to harm Americans.”
According to the indictment, one of the Africans described Pouryan as an arms trafficker with ties to the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Court documents describe meetings that began last June between the informants and defendants in Ghana and Benin in West Africa, and later in Kiev, Ukraine, and Bucharest. The informants told the accused men they wanted to transfer a large shipment of heroin from Benin to Ghana so it could be sent to the United States by commercial airplane. The informants also told the defendants the Taliban wanted to buy large quantities of cocaine to sell in the United States.
Last fall, the informants held meetings in which they told the defendants the Taliban would use the proceeds from the narcotics sales to buy weapons to fight the Americans.
DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said, “Today we eliminated an entrenched global criminal network, preventing it from moving ton quantities of cocaine, laundering millions in drug money, and trading arms to the Taliban to undermine the rule of law and kill Americans.”