I also wonder if this was a setup from the other side...
Were there really rockets for sale, or was this an attempt by the transdneisterite government to catch a potential terrorist interested in buying rockets?

ATS: Europe Stages Nuclear Crisis Test

More than 60 countries are taking part in the 36-hour test, organised by the UN atomic energy agency

The test began at 0600 (0300 GMT

Full details are being kept secret to make the simulated accident as real as possible for emergency teams.

Local residents were told to act as if the emergency were real, stay indoors and drink only bottled water

Moldova's breakaway region of Trans-Dniestr has requested advice and assistance
There is talk of bringing in the European security body, the OSCE.

Counterterrorism Blog: Alazam 5 Rockets and the Zarqawi Tape

May 5, 2006

By Bill Roggio


In last week's posting, The Military & Propaganda Messages in Zarqawi's Tape, I pointed out the missiles that were so prominent in video were crude and ineffective weapons as the rockets were small and unguided. While this is true in a conventional sense, it turns out the weapons depicted in the video are Alazam 5 rockets, some of which have been modified for a very unconventional purpose, as a delivery vehicle for a radiological weapon. An unnamed military source contacted me to identify the rockets shown in the video, and stated, "It was known as the Alazan 5 a former Soviet weather rocket in which the Chechen's modified as a surface to surface missile... There were many missing from Moldova and we had reports of five warheads that were modified as RDDs [Radiological Dispersion Devices] also missing." The military source followed up with a confirmation, and noted "They are most definitely the same missile... It shows there is a weapons link [from] the Moldova black market [to Iraq]..."

Alazan 5 rocket from the Zarqawi tape. Click to Enlarge.

There is an unusual amount of footage of these rockets within the Zarqawi videotape. al-Qaeda in Iraq may be sending a message: we have a delivery system available to launch radiological weapons inside Iraq - and beyond.

4/1/2004


Alarm over the prospect of the weapons falling into terrorist hands was raised by this journal in May 2003. An article on the convergence of the interests of Islamic terrorists and organized criminals along the infamous Balkan route (see Contemporary Review No. 1648, pp. 264-267) quoted reliable Russian intelligence sources warning that high-level representatives of al-Qaeda and Hamas as well as Iran and Chechnya had recently passed through Moldova to establish operational bases there.

There was reason to believe that the terrorist agents had been attracted to that former Soviet republic by an abandoned rock mine at the village of Bicioc, Dubossari Judet, storing fourteen unguarded radioactive isotope warheads. Such weapons were designed to explode in the air in order to mark a territory for attack by bombers. However, they could produce consequences similar to a small nuclear explosion if detonated on the ground. The unguarded warheads were understood a year ago to have been removed from a stockpile of thirty-five missiles at Silo 13 of Military Unit 4043 at Tiraspol Airfield where the rest were being held under proper supervision.

Potter documented 50 cases in which the rockets were used in clashes, by both guerrilla fighters and government forces. In most incidents, Alazans were fired indiscriminately at civilian targets, often crowded urban centers. They were used by Azeri forces in the war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and used by separatists in South Ossetia in clashes with Georgian troops

But the existence of "radiological warheads" for the Alazan was unknown until two years ago, when military documents describing them were obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies, a research group in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital