A retired U.S. Air Force colonel charged in the 1980s in an Iran-contra related weapons smuggling case has been indicted in a U.S. federal court in Miami with conspiring with an Israeli aeronautics engineer to illegally export 2,000 AK-47s to Somalia.
The June 17 indictment against Joseph O’Toole, 79, now based in Claremont, California, was unsealed today. POLITICO earlier Monday reported on the indictment of his Israeli co-defendant, Chanoch Miller. Miller, an Israeli citizen and former executive Israeli defense firm Radom Aviation, was arrested in Miami on June 18th and his indictment was unsealed on June 21.
O’Toole , then described as a Santa Ana-based aviation consultant, was charged in 1989 with conspiring with a controversial Israeli self-described former Mossad agent, Ari Ben-Menashe, and a Connecticut resident Richard St. Francis, with trying to sell three U.S. C-130 air cargo planes to Iran. But the charges against O’Toole were dropped in 1991 during the first Gulf War.