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world NEWSFriday 11 December 2015

UN security officers guards the area of the European headquarters of the United Nations in APNewsBreak: Dealer: Gun

Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, December 10, 2015. Geneva police were “actively searching” linked to Paris came thru US

Thursday for suspects in connection with an investigation into the Paris attacks last month, and JOVANA GEC
DUSAN STOJANOVIC
authorities raised the security alert level in the city and surrounding region, Swiss security officials Associated Press
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — One of the guns linked to
said. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP) Islamic militants in the Paris attacks that killed 130
people was exported to the United States in 2013, the
Geneva police hunting 4 said to have IS ties head of a Serbian arms factory said Thursday.
Milojko Brzakovic of the Zastava arms factory told The
JAMEY KEATEN Swiss daily Le Matin. They matic missions in Geneva Associated Press that the M92 semi-automatic pistol’s
Associated Press were pictured each in a on Thursday. Normally, offi- serial number matched one his company delivered
GENEVA (AP) — Working crouched pose and hold- cers carry lighter weapons. to an American online arms dealer in May 2013. It
on a tip from the CIA, Ge- ing up an index finger — Geneva police were also was not clear how the gun got back to Europe.
neva police were hunting said to be an Islamic State deploying more officers at At least seven of the weapons used or discovered af-
for at least four suspects gesture. the city’s train station and ter the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris have been identified
allegedly linked to the It was too early to de- airport. The U.N. office in as being produced by the Serbian factory located in
radical Islamic State group termine whether other Geneva was also increas- Kragujevac, in central Serbia. Most were manufac-
and believed to be plot- suspects might still be at ing its security precautions, tured before Yugoslavia broke up in a civil war in the
ting a “specific” attack in large, the official said. He even though it said there 1990s and most of those are modified versions of the
the city, Swiss officials said also declined to identify was no indication of any Soviet AK-47, or Kalashnikov.
Thursday. the names, ages or nation- specific increased threat Brzakovic said all the guns were delivered legally but
As city police raised their alities of the people being against U.N. staff. could have later found their way into illegal channels.
security alert level, Swiss sought. Police were working with “One was delivered to Bosnia in 1983, one to Skopje,
state prosecutors opened The Geneva security de- international and national Macedonia in December 1987, one to Golubici, near
investigations into a sus- partment said Swiss na- authorities to locate sus- Knin (Croatia) in 1988, one to Zagreb (Croatia) 1987,”
pected criminal plot and tional authorities flagged pects they believed to be he said.
suspected violations of a “suspicious individuals” in the Geneva region, offi- He said the M92 pistol “is a semi-automatic weapon,
ban into groups like Islamic who could be in Geneva cials said. “We have gone a hunting and sporting weapon ... it cannot fire bar-
State and al-Qaida. or the vicinity to city au- from a vague threat to a rage fire, only single shots ... which are legal in Amer-
The CIA alerted Swiss au- thorities on Wednesday. It specific one,” Emmanuelle ica.”
thorities to the four men didn’t specify how many Lo Verso, a spokeswoman He said it was exported to an online arms seller in the
on Wednesday, prompting people were being sought for the security depart- United States, the Florida-based Century Arms, to
the manhunt, a Swiss offi- or name them. ment, told the AP. which his factory exports up to 25,000 hunting and
cial with knowledge of the The official said, however, The Geneva prosecutor’s sports guns every year. He said the gun was delivered
investigation told The Asso- the suspects were not be- office said an official inves- as a semi-automatic, but he did not know whether
ciated Press on Thursday. lieved to have had links to tigation has been opened someone turned it into an automatic after delivery.
He spoke on condition of the Paris terror attacks, ap- into “criminal preparatory The so-called “shortened Kalashnikov” is listed by U.S.
anonymity because of the pearing to revise an earlier acts” — a charge against arms dealers as selling for about $460 apiece.
sensitivity of the matter. statement from the Gene- anyone who takes “con- In a video posted online in December 2013, Century
The official confirmed the va security department. crete measures of a tech- Arms advertised they were selling the AK-style pistol
suspects were four men Heavily-armed police car- nical or organizational type PAP M92, “a brand new firearm from the Zastava fac-
shown in a photograph rying submachine guns in the aim of committing a tory in Serbia” and demonstrated its attributes.
linked to a news report in stood guard outside diplo- grave infraction.”q The AP left messages seeking comment on the gun
with Century Arms, the FBI and another U.S. govern-
ment agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire-
arms and Explosives.
Brzakovic insisted that all arms exports from Serbia are
under strict government control.
“We submit a request to our government to give
consent and authorize the export. Until we receive
that, we make no contract. Once we get a permis-
sion to export, we make a contract and arrange the
dynamics,” he said.
A web of rules and a large U.S. bureaucracy oversee
the legal import and export of weapons like the Ser-
bian M92 semi-automatic pistol.
American government approval is required to import
firearms into the U.S.q