NIA Wants Thai Gunrunner

Held by the Thai police, Willy is believed to have a role in illegally supplying Chinese weapons to Naga rebels

Thai police arrested Wuthikom Naruenartwanich alias Willy on 30 August and started grilling him about his role in shipping illegally procured Chinese weapons to Naga rebels in India. During initial questioning, Willy told police he was a restaurant owner in Bangkok and denied involvement in arms deals, Police Colonel Charoen Sisasalak said in Bangkok. “But we are grilling him and also checking his records because the Indians have provided a lot of details,” Sisasalak said. “There are some signs that he could be more than just a restaurant owner.” But Sisasalak was not willing to provide details, “in the interest of investigations”.

India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials claim they have ‘robust evidence’ on the basis of which to seek Willy’s extradition to stand trial in India.

China used to supply Northeastern rebels weapons for free between 1966 and 1976, training and equipping several batches of Naga and Mizo rebels. But that stopped with the end of the Cultural Revolution and the demise of Mao. After that, Northeastern rebels depended on black markets on the Thai-Cambodian border for weapons left behind during the Vietnam War. But towards the end of 1980s, Chinese ordnance majors started flooding these black markets and suppliers like Willy lapped them up to make a quick buck, feeding everyone from LTTE to NSCN and ULFA.

“Our agents are in Bangkok to interrogate Willy and the extradition process is on,” says NIA chief Sharad Kumar. “He is already being tried in absentia in India… I am sure the Thais will cooperate with us.”

If India manages to get Willy extradited from Thailand, it will be the first such case between the two countries after they signed an extradition treaty during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Thailand last year.

Willy is one of the four main accused in the 2009-10 gunrunning case that centres round Naga rebel leader Anthony Shimray. Shimray, a top leader of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), was reported to have been arrested in Bihar in October 2010, though NSCN says he was picked up from Nepal.

“Shimray has already told us that Willy could provide more details of his links to the Chinese arms dealers that Shimray does not know about,” said a senior NIA official now in Bangkok. “That would crucial for us to unravel the network used by our rebels to bring Chinese weapons into the country.”

NIA says Anthony Shimray has confessed during questioning that a huge shipment of Chinese weapons was to be taken to the Cox’s Bazar coast in Bangladesh from Beihei port in the South China Sea near Vietnam in 2010. The consignment was then to be taken by trucks run by a Bangladesh smuggling syndicate to the Chittagong Hill Tracts and delivered to the NSCN rebels in Mizoram. The NIA charge sheet names Willy, Shimray and two others in the arms smuggling case they have filed.

Twice before have huge weapons consignments been intercepted on this route that runs from Southeast Asia to the Bangladesh coast and into India’s Northeast.

In April-May 1995, the Indian army launched ‘Operation Golden Bird’ after it was discovered that more than 200 rebel fighters from three separatist groups had entered the Mizoram hills after picking up a huge consignment of weapons at Wyakaung beach near Cox’s Bazar. 38 rebels were killed in a series of gun battles in the hills and 118 rebels, including some leaders, were arrested by Indian troops, who had managed to corner the rebel column with help from the Myanmar army, which had blocked escape routes by sealing its side of the hilly border. A large number of weapons were seized.

On 30 April 2004, Bangladesh police seized a huge consignment of weapons from a dock in Chittagong after they had been brought into the port city by small boats in a lighterage operation from a big ship that had transported the weapons all the way from Hong Kong. Bangladesh arms dealer Hafizur Rahman, arrested after Sheikh Hasina came to power in 2009, has told police in Chittagong during questioning that the weapons were meant for the ULFA, which would take them into the Northeast, keep some and sell the rest to other groups.

Several top Bangladesh intelligence officials have been implicated in the case and are now facing trial. A red corner notice has been issued for ULFA Military Wing Chief Paresh Barua, seeking his arrest to stand trial in the case. But Barua is said to have shifted base from Bangladesh to somewhere in the Myanmar-China border near the town of Ruili.

Shimray told the NIA during interrogation that he paid an advance of $800,000 in April 2010 to a Bangkok-based company run by Willy to source rocket launchers, grenades, assault rifles and ammunition for the NSCN from a weapons supplier in mainland China.

The NIA says it has now got hold of emails exchanged between NSCN (I-M) leaders and Willy regarding the clandestine purchase of more than 1,000 AK series rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers. It also has evidence of $700,000 paid to a Chinese firm by Willy for the deal. Another businessman who introduced Shimray and other NSCN leaders to Willy is now a witness in the case.

According to the NIA charge sheet, Willy put the NSCN leaders in touch with one Yuthna, a representative of Chinese firm TCL, which was the ‘cut-out’ for Chinese ordnance major Norinco. The NIA also has electronic receipts of the payments—$700,000 to TCL and $100,000 to shipping agent Kittichai of Intermarine Shipping Company of Bangkok for transporting the weapons to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

Chinese weaponsNaga rebelsThai police