US blacklists man who tried to buy North Korean weapons for ISIS terrorists

The U.S. has blacklisted an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) affiliate who sought to buy weapons from North Korea, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.

According to a press release, leaders of the Islamic terror organization directed Egyptian national Osama Abdelmongy Abdalla Bakr to contact North Korean officials in Brazil and secure light arms, anti-drone technology and other weapons in 2016.

Bakr was unsuccessful, the Treasury added, but he remained in contact with ISIS leaders through at least 2018. His current whereabouts are unclear, though Brazilian government records indicate he was summoned to appear in court in 2020 for immigration-related charges.

“North Korea has a long history of supplying arms and ammunition to radical non-state actors,” said Benjamin Young, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who has written on North Korea’s activities in the developing world.

This support and the DPRK’s involvement in assassinations on foreign soil led the U.S. to relabel the country a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 2017. But even North Korea has limits, Young told NK News. “ISIS is an evil organization that Pyongyang won’t even stoop to.”

Other militant groups North Korea has supplied arms to include the Japanese Red Army, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Tamil Tigers, a pattern Young attributes to the groups’ far-left leanings.

In 2014, researchers found ISIS fighters were using DPRK-made ammunition and rocket launchers, though analysts said it was more likely that jihadists had captured the weapons from Syrian government caches rather than purchased them directly from Pyongyang.

Bakr’s designation came alongside several others designed to target weapons trafficking networks in East Africa. The designation effectively cuts Bakr off from the U.S. financial system and blacklists any companies he owns.

The U.S. and others have rolled out new sanctions against North Korean entities in a bid to dissuade the country from further developing its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. Unilateral sanctions such as Tuesday’s designation of Bakr have become more important as the U.N. Security Council, which is charged with imposing international sanctions on the DPRK, has remained deadlocked in the face of Chinese and Russian opposition.

Source: Nknews