ABOVE: Majid Kakavand

---

Color me surprised (not really) but this afternoon a French court rejected the U.S. request to extradite Majid Kakavand, an Iranian alleged to have been involved in the export of U.S.-origin items to Iran through a company he created in Malaysia. This blog has posted on the Kakavand case here, here, and here. Today’s decision was foreshadowed by earlier findings by French government agencies that the U.S.-origin items were not dual use items, as the U.S. claimed, and that therefore their export to Iran didn’t violate French law, a precondition to granting an extradition request in this case.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice indicated that the Department wouldn’t give up and would continue to pursue Kakavand. Since Kakavand says he’s hopping on the first plane back to Tehran, one has to wonder what the DOJ has in mind here. Are they going to request that Iran extradite him? I suppose that they are hoping that Kakavand will visit, say, Georgia or some other country that might be more favorable to an extradition request or an extraordinary rendition. I’m not taking that bet.

A French-language press report in L’Express added some interesting details. Kakavand’s case had been diplomatically linked to the case of Clotilde Reiss, a French citizen being held in Tehran for having violated Iranian law when she took photographs of the Iranian election protests and emailed them to a friend. Nevertheless, Kakavand threw Ms. Reiss under his departing Airbus by saying he hoped she would be released “if she were innocent.” But, if she did take those pictures, well, too bad for her.

Mr. Kakavand, who is unlikely to be travelling anywhere outside of Iran other than France, indicated his desire to return to the land of Voltaire and Montesquieu, noting, as L’Express put it, that “il connaît déjà un peu la langue et qu’il a appris, malgré tout, à aimer.” (“He already knew a little bit of French, which he had, notwithstanding everything else, learned to love.”) He may, however, have a hard time finding copies of Proust and Stendahl to read in Tehran.

Last week Emenike Charles Nwankwoala, a 49-year-old resident of Laurel, Maryland, pleaded guilty to charges that he exported shotguns, pistols and ammunition to Nigeria without a license. According to the press release from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), Nwankwoala had been exporting these items for ten years to Nigeria concealed in shipping containers with automobiles, hospital beds, home furnishings and the like. For at least part of this period, he was employed as a probation officer.

The investigation appeared to have started after Nwankwoala got a little chatty with an undercover ICE agent in May 2009. ICE had likely been tipped off to Nwankwoala’s side business by one of the firearms dealers that sold him the weapons, although the press release doesn’t indicate that. Thereafter, ICE detained one of Nwankwoala’s shipping containers and found the contraband goodies concealed inside.

Interestingly, Nwankwoala had previously applied for licenses from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) for Mossberg 500 and Maverick 88 shotguns of the type found in the container. (BIS licenses shotguns with barrel lengths of 18 inches or greater.) A license application by Nwankwoala for a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun for export to Nigeria for personal use was granted. A subsequent application in February 2009 for 45 Mossberg 500 and Maverick 88 shotguns to be used at a shooting range in Nigeria was denied when Nwankwoala could not provide documentation of the existence of these firing ranges. Why Nwankwoala had a sudden crise de conscience and began applying for licenses rather than just stuffing them into the trunks of cars in shipping containers is not clear.