Man ‘caught smuggling RIRA arms in Croatia’

CROAT police have arrested a man caught smuggling 50 NATO-issue rocket-launched grenades on a suspected arms run for the Real IRA.

Bozo Grgic, 42, an unemployed Bosnian, was arrested on Friday after Croat police swooped in Trilj, 40 miles north of the Adriatic port of Split.

Grgic was found with 50 grenades on the back seat of his car in unopened boxes marked as property of NATO forces.

Sources close to the investigation said the weapons were destined for the dissident republican group. The Bosnian’s lawyer said his client had denied arms smuggling.

Grgic appeared in court in Sinj in central Croatia yesterday where he was remanded in custody in Bilice Prison in Split pending further investigations on charges of illegal possession of weapons. He told the court he had picked up the grenades after they “fell off the back of a lorry” which was driving in front of him. Police believe the grenades were stolen from supplies for peacekeeping troops stationed in the Balkans because they were in the unopened boxes marked as NATO property.

The raid comes just weeks after five people believed to be setting up a logistics network for the Real IRA were arrested in dawn raids after weapons and munitions were found in the French port of Dieppe. French police, counter-intelligence services and

anti-terrorist units carried out early-morning raids across Normandy and Brittany.

Officials in France said the five were French nationals from the Brittany area, but refused to confirm they were members of Breton nationalist organisations which support terror groups, in particular Spain’s ETA, the armed Basque separatist group in Spain.

In 1999, eight tonnes of dynamite and detonators were stolen by Breton nationalists linked with in the Cotes d’Amor region.

The Real IRA has been linked to arms from Croatia in the past. In August 2000, Croat police seized a shipment of arms, including a rocket launcher, 130 kilos of plastic explosives and other munitions allegedly destined for Dublin.

Just one month later, a warhead from an RPG18 rocket, believed to have been smuggled from the Balkans, was fired at the London headquarters of MI6.

British authorities believe the attack was carried out by the Real IRA.

The bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia has made the area a haven for arms smugglers , as everything from rocket launchers to pistols abandoned or lost during the chaos of the conflict have gone on sale.

A trade route for illegal arms has sprung up stretching from as far south-east as Tirana right through eastern and central Europe and into countries like France and Spain, Britain and Ireland.

Earlier this year, hundreds of handguns were stolen from a Croatian army barracks near Split. The guns reportedly ended up in the western European market for illegal arms.