US sent sniper rifles to bin Laden fighters

Twenty-five high-powered sniper rifles were sent by the United States Government 12 years ago to a group of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan that included Osama bin Laden, according to court testimony and the guns’ maker.

The rifles, made by Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, of Tennessee and paid for by the government, were shipped during the collaboration between the United States and Muslims then fighting to drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

Experts doubt if weapons could still be used but the transaction further illustrates how Americans are fighting an enemy that US officials once supported and liberally armed.

In a trial early this year of suspects in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa, Essam Al-Ridi, identified as a former pilot for bin Laden, said he shipped the weapons in 1989 to Sheik Abdallah Azzam, bin Laden’s ideological mentor. The weapons had range-finding equipment and night-vision scopes.

During the late 1980s, the United States supplied arms worth about £350m a year to anti-Soviet fighters, including Afghanistan’s current Taliban rulers, bin Laden and others.

The supplies included a range of weapons from small arms to shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

Al-Ridi, an American citizen born in Egypt, testified that Azzam liked the rifles because they could be ‘‘carried by individuals so it’s made in such a way where you could have a heavy cannon but mobile by an individual’’.

While in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al-Ridi said he saw bin Laden several times with Azzam.

Ronnie Barrett, president of Murfreesboro, Tennessee-based Barrett Firearms, likened sale of the .50-calibre armour-piercing rifles to the supply of the Stinger surface-to-air missiles given to anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan.

‘‘Barrett rifles were picked up by US government trucks, shipped to US government bases and shipped to those Afghan freedom fighters,’’ Barrett said.

Tom Diaz, analyst with the Violence Policy Centre, which advocates more gun restrictions, said: ‘‘These .50-calibre sniper rifles are ideal tools for terror and assassination.’’

But firearms expert Charles Cutshaw, of Jane’s Information Group, said: ‘‘If they wanted to bring down an aircraft, the best way would be to bring it down with a Stinger.’’

Guerrillas using Stingers were credited with shooting down more than 270 Soviet aircraft.