Arms Dealer Found Guilty in Plot to Sell Helicopters to Iraq Regime

Millionaire arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian was found guilty Friday of violating federal weapons smuggling and conspiracy statutes in connection with a failed attempt to sell 103 helicopters and two rocket launchers to Iraq in 1983.

After two days of deliberation, a 12-member jury decided that Soghanalian conspired with two former executives of the Los Angeles-based Hughes Helicopter Corp. to skirt a U.S. export ban on arms sales to Iraq, and then lied about it. The maximum penalty includes 24 years in jail, and fines of up to $240,000.

Pan Aviation Inc., a Miami aircraft leasing and cargo company headed by Soghanalian’s son, Garabet, was also found guilty of the same charges. Both were found innocent of three other related charges.

As the rotund Soghanalian was taken into federal custody, his attorney, Neal R. Sonnett, denounced the verdict as “the result of the political climate involving our feelings toward Iraq.”

“Clearly,” said Sonnet, “what Sarkis Soghanalian was engaged in was strictly legal business.” He said he will appeal.

The former Hughes executives named as co-conspirators in the 1987 indictment are Carl D. Perry and William Ellis. They are scheduled to stand trial in U.S. District court in December on similar charges.

Born in Turkey, Soghanalian, 62, is a Lebanese citizen who now lives in a palatial home on an island in Biscayne Bay, not far from Miami Beach. Over the years he has supplied arms to the Christian militia in Lebanon, sold rockets to Argentina during the Falklands War and run guns to Anastasio Somoza’s soldiers in Nicaragua.

Although the helicopter deal alleged by the government never did go through, many of the weapons used by the Iraqis against allied troops in the Persian Gulf War were supplied by Soghanalian during a time when the Reagan Administration secretly encouraged private brokers to assist Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, according to published reports.