Arms trade may have Richardson link
Exclusive: Accountant in federal inquiry denies helping sell weapons to thugs worldwide
11:55 PM CST on Saturday, January 14, 2006
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
First of two parts
On a warm and windy Tuesday last spring, armed federal agents assembled for an early-morning raid on suburbia.
When the order came, some headed to a small, nondescript accounting firm in Richardson where a candy dish tempted visitors and a framed print of the Declaration of Independence hung on the wall.
Others went to a modest brick home with a nice lawn, a 5-year-old Mercedes E20 in the garage, and a movable basketball goal in the back.
The agents, some from the FBI and others from the Treasury Department, carried a three-page letter that a federal official in Washington had secretly signed four days earlier.
It declared in hazy, bureaucratic language that Richard Ammar Chichakli – 47, U.S. citizen, decorated Army veteran, certified public accountant, small-time entrepreneur, self-described conservative Republican, Christian, 19-year Richardson resident, youth soccer coach, suburban dad and, he says, an innocent man – was actually someone far different.
Richard Chichakli
The letter said Mr. Chichakli was part of the world's most notorious network of illicit gunrunners, people willing to arm anybody who would wire cash to faraway bank accounts or launder diamonds or timber on the global black market.
The network's secret customers, the government said, included diamond-hunting rebel gangs with a lust for rape, slaughter and mutilation. One of them was Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front, which in 1998 carried out a terrorism campaign called Operation No Living Thing – as in, don't leave any.
Another was the RUF's sponsor, Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president charged with crimes against humanity – including, his 2003 indictment says, "unlawful killings, abductions, forced labor, physical and sexual violence, use of child soldiers, looting and burning of civilian structures." Now ducking trial in Nigeria, he is said to be a continuing threat to the region's peace and stability.
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What do you know about Robert Taylor and US Christian Leader Pat Robertson ?
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