As a highly successful and opulently wealthy international arms dealer, Mr. Al Kassar has reportedly cultivated a global network of interesting contacts. One contact was the alleged Russian mafia boss Semion Mogilevich, and at least one locus for contact was Marbella, Spain.

By coincidence, a little less than two weeks before September 11, 2001, a plane crashed at Spain’s Malaga airport carrying a passenger from Morocco on his way to meet with both Mr. Al Kassar and Mr. Mogilevich. According to the London Sunday Express, the passenger was believed by Israeli intelligence to be a “bag man” for Osama bin Laden. He was being monitored by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad but was released after being treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital, in the confusion after the plane crash.

Britain’s MI5, the CIA and Mossad were all reportedly watching the man from when he boarded the flight in Morocco. Their concern, according to Mossad sources, was that he was en route to meet with Mogilevich and Al Kassar near Marbella, where “Arms dealers regularly broker deals . . . to sell weapons shipped from the Balkans and then sold on to Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Middle East.”

Since the flight originated from Spanish territory in North Africa, passengers would face no immigration or security checks at Malaga. Hence the appeal of Marbella. “Marbella has become a playground for Russian gang bosses,” according to sources quoted in this timely but ignored article.

The prospect of a terror network between the Russian mafia and bin Laden “has put all Western intelligence services on red alert,” according to the Express article published on September 2, 2001. Six shootings or attempted murders in the Marbella vicinity in the previous month had concerned authorities, who however were reportedly shorthanded for dealing with “infighting between various Russians” because they were dealing with Basque separatists. “Yet pressure from countries like Britain is mounting to force Spain to deal with the Russian mafia and their links to bin Laden before they spread terror through Europe – and into Britain,” the article concludes.

That plane crash, which killed three passengers, seems to have been lucky for Mr. Bin Laden. Had the plane landed safely, presumably the surveillance of the ‘bag man’ would have continued, and presumably his meeting with Mogilevich and al Kassar would also have come under surveillance.

In the years lapsed since 2001, Mr. Mogilevich himself seems to have turned up in northern Virginia – safe haven for U.S. government contractors, the military-security-surveillance complex, gun sellers, and the lawyers and lobbyists who protect them.

A little background: Mogilevich’s name has several variant spellings, and Mr. Mogilevich has gone by numerous aliases, listed by the FBI as Seva Moguilevich, Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk, Semen Yukovich Telesh, Simeon Mogilevitch, Semjon Mogilevcs, Shimon Makelwitsh, Shimon Makhelwitsch, “Seva.”

I discovered in 2006 that companies linked to Mogilevich had set up shop in Virginia. I published my discovery of these entities, registered in the Virginia database, in Online Journal on March 24, 2006 (“Semion Mogilevich, wanted by FBI, in northern Virginia?”).

I also published articles about the apparent Mogilevich-Commonwealth of Virginia connection on March 23, 2006 and April 20, 2006 on this blog site (“Semion Mogilevich in Virginia?” and “Virginia is for Mogilevich”), and around the same time in the small community weekly that I was writing for at the time, the Prince George’s Sentinel.

Like the arrest of Monzer al Kassar in June of this year, the local trail for Mogilevich was ignored by daily newspapers in the vicinity. Admittedly the paper trail is somewhat difficult to penetrate because of Virginia’s lack of close tabs on corporate connections. A business entity that cancels its registration can get its records expunged with few lingering traces in the public record.

According to attorney Alan Grayson, an expert on government contracts who has done extensive work on corporate fraud, Virginia “has the most liberal law in the country” when it comes to allowing business entities to keep their records out of public view. If Mogilevich’s business entities are listed in towns like Virginia Beach, Grayson said in response to questions, it’s because he knows somebody there. But it is difficult to find out who that somebody might be.

Perhaps the Al Kassar case will turn up more information on Mogilevich.