2500 to 8000 Surface-to-Air Missiles Out of NTC Control, US Official

There is no accurate information over the smuggling of missing stocks of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles out of Libya, as some reports say that 2500 to 8000 small surface-to-air missiles are out of the control of the new authority in Libya, U.S. official said on Monday in Algiers.

In a press conference in the US Embassy in Algiers, Derrin Smith, an adviser to the U.S. government’s inter-agency task force on MANPADS, said predictions that large numbers of the weapons would be taken out of Libya to al Qaeda’s desert strongholds have not been realized.

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had about 20,000 of the missiles. Many of them were looted during the conflict that ended his rule, prompting concern that they could end up in the hands of al Qaeda’s North African branch.

The weapons, often referred to as MANPADS or “man portable air defense systems”, are “favored by militant groups because they are light and portable, relatively simple to use and can in theory bring down a civilian airliner,” the official was quoted as saying.

“It appears at this point that most of the Libyan MANPAD stocks continue to be in the hands of Libyan personnel. So we’ll work with the government to recover those into centralized government inventory control,” Smith added.

“The bad news is that no one is certain what the exact number is that is outside government control and it will take some months of effort to come up with a reasonable number,” he admitted.

Security experts have said that MANPADS could be acquired by militants or smugglers and taken across Libya’s porous southern borders into neighboring Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Al Qaeda’s in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is active in the Sahara desert, which straddles those countries. An AQIM commander has said his group exploited the Libya conflict to obtain weapons.

But Smith said shoulder-fired missiles, or their components, from Libyan stocks had so far not been found among arms shipments intercepted in the Sahara.

“We have not had much indication of MANPADS yet moving through the region,” he said after talks with Algerian officials.

“There were some components of surface-to-air missiles that have been interdicted by … regional countries. They did share the information with us,” he said.

“Expert analysis revealed those components were not related to the inventory or stocks in Libya. And none of the components that have been recovered at any of the borders were fully functioning.”

The US official further denied reports that Washington obtains information about a potential terror attack that would target an airport in Algeria with the use of earth to air missiles, pointing out that Algeria’s airport security system is one of best worldwide. 

Elsewhere, Daniel Benjamin arrived Tuesday to Algiers in a three-day visit, in the frame of the working group for countering terrorism in the Sahel region, recommended by the international counterterrorism conference, recently held in the US.