Michael Harari, the Israeli gun-runner who helped supply John Garang's Sudanese People's Liberation Army in a covert operation involving Roger Winter of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Dan Eiffe of Norwegian Peoples Aid, is currently wanted for arrest by the government of Norway. The Norwegian warrant, issued through Interpol in June 1998, stems from Harari's coordination of assassination operations against leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization in revenge for the terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. On July 23, 1973, one of Harari's Mossad teams was dispatched to Norway, where it shot and killed Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi. Harari had wrongly believed Bouchikhi to be PLO intelligence chief Hassan Salameh.
In June 1998, Oslo prosecutor Lasse Qvigstad issued an international arrest warrant, through Interpol, for Harari, whom he charged as an accessory to the Bouchikhi murder. The warrant's issuance extends the statute of limitation on the murder investigation another 25 years.
Gun-running operations always need the talents of a fixer, and Harari is the right man for covertly supplying arms to the SPLA, whose fight against the Sudan government is aiding Anglo-Israeli geopolitical schemes for East Africa. In Africa, the arms dealer must circumvent arms embargoes, and/or make otherwise illegal sales to countries or organizations. The fixer must have ties to at least one national intelligence service, affording him official cover to procure end-user certificates, or extricate himself from legal jams. With cash scarce in Africa, a fixer must be able to accept anything as payment for weapons--from drugs to diamonds and gold, to such mundane commodities as coffee and smuggled cigarettes.
Michael Harari, now 71, and a legend in the Israeli Mossad, makes the ideal fixer, with his multiple connections to the underworld of illegal diamond, drugs and commodity trading.
When he finished directing Mossad death squads against the PLO in the early 1970s, Harari was transferred to Central and South America. Operating out of Mexico, Panama, and Florida, he integrated his operations with the emerging cocaine trade. His weapons-trafficking activities were intimately interwoven with the region's drug networks, particularly those of Colombia's Medellín and Cali cocaine cartels.
In the 1970s, Harari was trafficking weapons to a faction, run by Eden Pastora, of the Nicaraguan Sandinista rebels, who were fighting the regime of Anastasio Somoza. After Somoza's overthrow, Pastora's faction joined the Contras, under the name ARDE, and Harari's Israeli-linked arms- and drug-smuggling network became the backbone of the Contra supply operation. Harari used Panama as a base and used his position as security adviser to Panamanian Defense Forces chief Gen. Manuel Noriega, to work closely with CIA officer Duane Clarridge, then in charge of the Contra resupply operation under the direction of Vice President George Bush.
Harari's Panamanian operations always ran through his his own network, which exists to this day, although Harari himself returned to Israel after Bush's Dec. 20, 1989 Panama invasion. Much of this network is indirectly detailed in the recently released report of the CIA Inspector General regarding allegations of drug trafficking by the Contras (Allegations of Connections between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Vol. II: The Contra Story). Harari is not mentioned in the report, but one of his associates is: George Morales, a major trafficker for the Medellín Cartel, who played a role in assassination threats against then-U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Lewis Tambs, in the 1980s. In 1987, Morales gave hours of testimony before the Senate's Kerry Committee investigating Iran-Contra, and detailed how he delivered weapons and other equipment to the Contras, in return for their help in smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. EIR has reports that Morales is still part of the same network as Harari.
Another member of Harari's network mentioned in the CIA Inspector General's report is smuggler Alberto Prado Herreros, who turns up in the covert supply operations to the SPLA.
Throughout the tangled history of the Contra resupply operation, various players, such as Pastora and Morales, were dropped when it became expedient, especially after the Iran-Contra story broke in 1986. But Harari continued to enjoy a privileged status, and was unhindered when he left Panama after Bush's invasion, in order to seek a more secure and profitable base of operations in Africa.
Africa has become an important theater of operations for Israeli intelligence, dovetailing neatly with the geopolitical aims of the British Empire. Africa has long been a key site for Israeli operations against the Arab states, and Israeli intelligence has worked hard to undermine the considerable support the PLO enjoyed in many African countries. Economically, Israelis have always reaped profit through smuggling the region's gold, diamonds, and other gems, and are always ready to trade weapons for these valuable resources. Furthermore, the tremendous expansion of drug trafficking in the region, has made Africa an El Dorado for a man of Harari's skills.
Harari is said to have been active where Israeli weapons trafficking, smuggling, and intelligence are operational, including in Angola, Central Africa, the Great Lakes region, as well as the Horn of Africa. The countries along the Red Sea littoral, particularly Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, have been targets of Israeli intelligence activity. Sudan is seen as Israel's number-one enemy in Africa.
Israel's early sponsorship of the Idi Amin regime in Uganda, for deployment against Sudan in the early 1970s, indicates the strategic position Uganda has in Israeli schemes. Among the Israelis active there is retired Gen. David Agmon, the former chief of staff of the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Agmon is now a personal adviser to Uganda's Museveni and has been seen quite often in public with him. Agmon operates through the Australian mining company Russell Resources, which was granted gold-mining concessions in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, shortly after the overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. These concessions are currently in the area occupied by the Congolese rebels and Ugandan and Rwandan troops.