Monzer al-Kassar (born in al-Nabk, Syria in 1945), also known as the "Prince of Marbella", is an international arms dealer. He has been connected to numerous crimes, including the Achille Lauro hijacking and the Iran-Contra scandal. On November 20, 2008, he was convicted in U.S. federal court as part of a U.S. government sting, for agreeing to sell arms to undercover agents posing as suppliers for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)...
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Monzer al-Kassar (born in al-Nabk, Syria in 1945), also known as the "Prince of Marbella", is an international arms dealer. He has been connected to numerous crimes, including the Achille Lauro hijacking and the Iran-Contra scandal. On November 20, 2008, he was convicted in U.S. federal court as part of a U.S. government sting, for agreeing to sell arms to undercover agents posing as suppliers for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian guerrilla organization. He was sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment.
His father, Mohamed al-Kassar, was a supporter of president Hafez al-Assad, and was appointed Syrian ambassador first to India and later to Canada. Monzer al-Kassar had links to the highest echelons of the Syrian government.
According to U.S. authorities, Monzer's mentor in the drug and arms trade was his older brother, Ghassan, who had begun selling drugs in the late 1960s. (Ghassan remained in the arms business until his death of natural causes in 2009).
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