One Big Bust of A Business Trip

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Alarming headlines last week suggested that international terrorism had come to Hong Kong. Three men of South Asian descent were arrested for allegedly trying to trade drugs for Stinger missiles, the shoulder-launched anti-aircraft weapons used to wipe out Soviet planes and helicopters in Afghanistan in the 1980s. A U.S. indictment of the three suspects claims that the arms were destined for al-Qaeda, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has enthusiastically hailed the bust as a "strike against the terrorism/drug-trafficking nexus."

The men apprehended in Hong Kong were two Pakistanis from Peshawar, Sayed Mustajab Shah, 54, and Muhammad Abid Afridi, 29, and Ilyas Ali, 55, a U.S. passport holder who lived in Minnesota from 1974 through 2001. In April, Ali allegedly started negotiations in San Diego to sell hashish and heroin to a buyer, who happened to be an undercover FBI agent. Apparently he then got on a plane to Pakistan to gather his two friends. On Sept. 15, say court papers, the threesome flew from Karachi to Hong Kong and checked into three rooms at the marble-clad Conrad Hotel, where the average room costs $210 per night. According to the indictment, the deal then firmed up: the three men offered 5 metric tons of hashish and 600 kilos of heroin. They later agreed, says the indictment, to take payment in the form of four Stinger missiles. After a couple of days of haggling, they allegedly told the undercover FBI men they intended to sell the Stingers to the Taliban, "an organization which the defendants indicated was the same as al-Qaeda," reads the indictment.

At dawn on Sept. 20th, a handful of FBI agents looked on as two Hong Kong police situation teams stormed the three hotel rooms. The three men gave no resistance. "We didn't have to draw our guns," says a senior Hong Kong police officer. "They went in a peaceful way."

Now they're kicking and screaming. The U.S. wants the three—who are being held in a smelly communal cell in Hong Kong—flown to the U.S. to stand trial for both drug and terrorism offenses. "It's my job," says defense counsel Jonathan Acton-Bond, "to make sure they're not extradited."

At this stage, much remains murky about the case, including the suspects' al-ledged al-Qaeda connection.

Whether the three suspects truly had terrorist ties is unproven; it's not even clear whether they had the ability to get such large quantities of drugs. What is clear is that America's war on terrorism has spread inexorably as the threats appear to multiply.