MIAMI CUBAN IMMIGRANT AND PALARAB PARTNER CAUGHT IN STING BUYING WEAPONS FOR WEST BANK TERRORISTS
JewishWorldReview.com |
IAMI — (MCT) Cuban migrant Yanny Aguila Urbay had been in the United States for six years when authorities say he met with an undercover police officer to discuss buying hundreds of stolen high-powered rifles, grenades and explosives to ship to the West Bank.
During a May 2009 meeting at Miami Jai-Alai, Aguila negotiated with the officer on behalf of a Hialeah, Fla., man who wanted to supply the weapons to the Palestinian Authority, prosecutors say.
“If this is good, this could happen monthly,” Aguila told the undercover officer, Pete Perez, a police sergeant in North Miami Beach, as FBI investigators secretly taped him. “I could get a shipment like this once a month.”
The sting operation against Aguila, 24, took center stage in Miami federal court Tuesday as Perez testified about his negotiations involving Aguila’s alleged partner, Abdalaziz Aziz Hamayel, 23, a Palestinian national who pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in December.
That left Aguila standing trial on a charge of collaborating with Hamayel to possess and send the weapons — including remote-control detonators — overseas.
A jury verdict may come by week’s end.
During the May meeting, Aguila told the undercover officer that Hamayel had a buyer interested in purchasing 300 M-16 rifles for up to $1,300 each. He said the buyer lived in a “big, expensive house in Coral Gables.”
To set up the deal, Aguila said on tape, he would be “happy with $100 on each piece.”
Aguila also discussed buying grenades and improvised explosive devices for Hamayel’s Palestinian contacts, according to the recording. He and Perez used code words such as “balloons” for grenades and “chairs” for IEDs.
“I’m sure he’s going to bite and continue doing business,” Aguila said, referring to Hamayel’s buyer. “We want him to come around once in a while.”
On the witness stand, Perez explained to the 12 jurors that, during the negotiations, he emphasized that the firearms were from New York and that the transaction would be illicit because the weapons were stolen.
But it also was clear from Perez’s testimony and the recordings that he dealt more with Hamayel than Aguila.
During another meeting in May 2009, Hamayel met with the officer in Perez’s pickup truck in Hialeah. They discussed a purchase of 300 M-16s with silencers, 200 grenades and 200 IEDs, according to the recording. The total deal would cost $380,000, but Hamayel said his buyer wanted to pay $120,000 less than that.
Hamayel also expressed interest in buying cell-phone and remote-control detonators.
He pressured the undercover officer to provide a sample of the weapons.
They agreed to meet again the following month in Hialeah, where Perez would show Hamayel a sampling, or “weapons flash.” Perez arranged to have the sample driven over in a second vehicle by another person involved in the sting operation.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors played a video showing Hamayel inside the vehicle, handling two M-16s, one AK-47, two grenades, three silencers and two remote detonators.
Hamayel told Perez that he was interested in buying the cache for his people “over there,” referring to the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank.
After the video was shown, federal prosecutor Karen Gilbert displayed the weapons for the jurors.
On the day after the “weapons flash,” Hamayel told Perez that he wanted a photo of the sample so he could provide proof to his buyer. Perez gave him the photo at a Burger King — but then lost touch with him.
More than a year passed before Perez and federal agents located Hamayel. In late August, Hamayel left Jordan for Chicago and then Miami, where he was arrested.
Comments are closed.
