Philippines-Bound Guns Seized; Man Held

Federal officers in Los Angeles and Phoenix reported Friday that they seized 125 semiautomatic pistols concealed in large microwave ovens destined for the Philippines after the arrest of a Filipino businessman as a suspected gunrunner.

Authorities said .22-caliber, .25-caliber and .380-caliber weapons were wrapped in plastic and hidden in ovens from which the fans and motors had been removed. U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents said they believed the guns were headed for the lucrative Philippine black market rather than for some revolutionary group.

The seizures of two ovens containing 84 pistols at an air freight company in Tempe, Ariz., and of one containing 41 others at a shipping company in Los Angeles came after what Chuck Pratt, resident agent in charge of the bureau’s Los Angeles office, said was a two-month gun-smuggling investigation by bureau and customs agents.

Officers said Nestor Gutierrez Atacador, 32, was arrested Tuesday at Burbank Airport as he arrived from Phoenix en route to Manila. Documents found in his suitcase reportedly led to the Tempe and Los Angeles air freight firms where the microwave ovens and guns were seized.

Pratt said the pistols were not the larger-caliber military weapons usually sought by revolutionaries. He agreed that illegal handgun sales in the Philippines bring big prices for smugglers.