Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Thursday, May 08, 2008
Indonesian convicted of trying to export rifle scopes
MADISON, Wis. — An Indonesian national faces up to a decade in prison after a jury in Wisconsin convicted him of trying to ship scores of assault rifle scopes overseas.
Prosecutors aren’t sure what Doli Sharief Pulungan planned to do with the scopes, Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Duchemin said.
Pulungan offered investigators various explanations, Duchemin said. He said he wanted the scopes to hunt boars, then said he needed them for a rifle competition in Indonesia, then said it was all a misunderstanding and a joke. Text messages investigators recovered indicate coconspirators in Indonesia planned to sell the scopes to police.
There’s no indication Pulungan has terrorist ties, Duchemin said, “but we really don’t know what he was going to do with the scopes once he got them back to Indonesia. He provided a lot of explanations which, frankly, don’t make a lot of sense.”
Duchemin said Pulungan wanted to export 100 Leupold Mark 4 CQ/T infrared scopes. They’re designed to attach to M-16 and AR-15 assault rifles.
The U.S. State Department has classified the scopes as defense articles. That means they can’t be exported without a license from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, a State Department subdivision.
Pulungan in July approached someone he knew at a Cashton airport equipment company with whom he’d been lining up other, legal exports to Indonesia, Duchemin said.
Pulungan asked his associate to purchase the scopes from the manufacturer and ship them to his Cashton address for later shipment to Indonesia. The associate refused to help him.
Pulungan, who was traveling with two Indonesian passports listing different birth dates, offered another Cashton associate $100,000 in September to purchase the scopes and ship them to Saudi Arabia, the prosecutor said. Pulungan hoped a contact at a Saudi airline could ship the scopes to Indonesia, Duchemin said.
But the Cashton associate contacted the FBI instead. The jury convicted Pulungan of conspiring to violate the Arms Export Act late Tuesday after a two-day trial.
Pulungan’s attorney, Christopher Kelly, didn’t return a message left at his office late Tuesday afternoon.
Pulungan is scheduled to be sentenced July 28. Indonesian authorities are still searching for his coconspirators.
Duchemin declined to identify Pulungan’s associates in Cashton or the equipment company, saying they did nothing wrong in the case.
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