{"id":29891,"date":"2025-10-18T07:22:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=29891"},"modified":"2025-10-18T07:22:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:22:56","slug":"smuggler-jailed-for-40-years-after-shipping-ballistic-missile-parts-from-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/10\/18\/smuggler-jailed-for-40-years-after-shipping-ballistic-missile-parts-from-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Smuggler jailed for 40 years after shipping ballistic missile parts from Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A weapons smuggler who used a fishing boat to ship ballistic missile parts from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen has been sentenced to 40 years in a US prison.<\/b><\/p>\n

Pakistani national Muhammad Pahlawan was detained during a US military operation in the Arabian Sea in January 2024 – during which two US Navy Seals drowned.<\/p>\n

Pahlawan’s crew testified they had been duped into taking part, having believed they were working as fishermen.<\/p>\n

The Houthis had launched sustained missile and drone attacks on Israel at the time, and targeted international commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they were acting in support of Gazans. Iran has consistently denied arming the Houthis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The crew’s detailed testimonies to a court in the US state of Virginia provide a rare look inside a smuggling operation that helped power the attacks.<\/p>\n

The components found on Pahlawan’s boat were “some of the most sophisticated weapon systems that Iran proliferates to other terrorist groups”, US federal prosecutors said after his trial.<\/p>\n

The 49-year-old was sentenced on Thursday, having been previously convicted on five counts – including terrorism offences and transporting weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

Court documents show the sentences for two of the five counts will run concurrently for 240 months, or 20 years. The other three counts, another 20 years, will run consecutive to that – making a total of 480 months, or 40 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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‘Walking dead person’<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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The eight crew members who testified in court said they had no idea what was inside the large packages on board the boat, named the Yunus.<\/p>\n

One crew member said that when he questioned Pahlawan about it, he was told to mind his own business.<\/p>\n

Pahlawan, however, knew just how dangerous the cargo was.<\/p>\n

He referred to himself as a “walking dead person” in text message exchanges with his wife, sent in the days before the January 2024 voyage which would get him arrested.<\/p>\n

“Just pray that [we] come back safely,” said the message, used as evidence in court.<\/p>\n

“Why do you talk like this, ‘may or may not come back’,” she asked him.<\/p>\n

Pahlawan told her: “Such is the nature of the job, my dear, such is the nature of the job.”<\/p>\n

His final words to her before sailing were: “Keep me in your prayers. May God take me there safely and bring me back safely, alright. Pray.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/picture><\/span>Pahlawan used a fishing boat to smuggle Iranian-made anti-ship cruise missile components and a warhead (Image: <\/span>US Department of Justice)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n

For this journey, Pahlawan was paid 1,400 million rials (\u00a325,200; $33,274) – a substantial fee prosecutors at his trial described as “danger money”.<\/p>\n

The trip was “part of a larger operation” funded and co-ordinated by two Iranian brothers, Yunus and Shahab Mir’kazei, said the then-US Department of Defense (now known as the Department of War) in a statement in June.<\/p>\n

The Mir’kazei brothers are allegedly affiliated, it added, with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) – the most powerful armed force in Iran. The IRGC is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US.<\/p>\n

Both Shahab and Yunus Mir’kazei have been charged by the American authorities, but are still at large and believed to be in Iran.<\/p>\n

Pahlawan made two successful smuggling voyages before he was caught – one in October 2023, and a second two months later.<\/p>\n

The dozen men he recruited to join him were all from Pakistan and had travelled across the border into Iran looking for work.<\/p>\n

Before setting off on the December trip, the US court heard, the crew were tasked with loading large packages on to the boat in Chabahar on Iran’s south coast.<\/p>\n

Then, after five or six days at sea, when they were close to the coast of Somalia, the crew described another boat pulling up next to them at night and them having to hand over the cargo.<\/p>\n

Crew member Mehandi Hassan told the court there were about five men on the other boat, who spoke in a language he didn’t recognise.<\/p>\n

Their next voyage, the following month, was expected to follow the same route. As before, it began in the small port of Konarak before sailing to Chabahar, where the crew were made to load heavy boxes on board.<\/p>\n

The packages, the US Navy would later discover, contained Iranian-made ballistic missile parts, anti-ship cruise missile components and a warhead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Special<\/picture><\/span>Navy Seals Nathan Gage Ingram (l) and Christopher Chambers (r) both drowned during the mission to intercept Pahlawan’s boat (Image: <\/span>US Department of Justice)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Once at sea, Pahlawan kept to himself, according to crew testimony, often staying in his cabin and watching movies on his phone. Sometimes they would see Pahlawan on a second mobile – a satellite phone – but they didn’t know what he was saying, said Mehandi Hassan, because he would speak in a language they didn’t understand.<\/p>\n

On 11 January, the crew said they were woken by the sound of helicopter rotors overhead and a US Navy ship pulling alongside. Pahlawan came out of his cabin to tell everyone to “keep going” and not to stop the boat, telling them the ship and helicopters belonged to pirates.<\/p>\n

Armed US Navy Seals and Coast Guard officers attempted to board the Yunus. “There was a lot of commotion,” one crew member, Aslam Hyder, told the court.<\/p>\n

Special Warfare Officer Christopher Chambers lost his grip and fell into the water during the operation – and Special Warfare Officer First Class Nathan Gage Ingram jumped in to try to save him.<\/p>\n

Both men were so laden with equipment that they quickly drowned, an internal report later found. Their bodies were never found and they were declared dead 10 days later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n

The crew remained on the Yunus for two days before being offloaded to a US Navy ship, the court heard, where they were separated into two groups and held in windowless containers.<\/p>\n

Pahlawan ordered the crew to lie and to say the captain had already fled. “He said, ‘Don’t tell them that I am the [captain], because I can do serious damage to you guys if you do that’,” Aslam Hyder told the court.<\/p>\n

“He started to threaten us… It was about the family and the children, that they will not know about you and you won’t know what happened to them,” he said. “Then we got very scared and we became quiet.”<\/p>\n

One by one, said crew members who gave evidence, they were taken out of the containers to be interrogated individually. Everyone on board – including Pahlawan – was asked who the captain was and, according to US prosecutors, Pahlawan “simply evaded, lied, and hid”.<\/p>\n

The American military said the packages found on board the Yunus were the first Iranian-supplied weapons to be seized by US forces since the Houthis had started attacking vessels in the Red Sea a few months earlier.<\/p>\n

But Pahlawan had been following a common route for smugglers carrying weapons bound for Yemen.<\/p>\n

Between 2015 and 2023, US forces and their allies seized almost 2.4 million pieces of ammunition, 365 anti-tank guided missiles, and more than 29,000 small arms and light weapons from small boats in the Arabian Sea, according to a UN report.<\/p>\n

Typically, smugglers use dhows – a type of small boat, often for fishing – to transport cargo close to the coast of Somalia.<\/p>\n

As with the Yunus, it is here that weapons are transferred to other, smaller boats, which then set sail to “secluded beaches off the southern coast of Yemen\u2026 where they are then smuggled across the desert to Houthi-controlled areas of the country”, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/picture><\/span>Among the cargo was this Iranian-made warhead, intended to form part of a ballistic missile (Image: <\/span>US Department of Justice)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n

William Freer, from the UK think tank Council on Geostrategy, told BBC News that while most of the Houthi attacks have involved smaller weapons, the components found on Pahlawan’s ship are “a lot more complicated and can pack a lot more punch”.<\/p>\n

“Very quickly, most shipping companies decided to redirect all their vessels, where possible, around South Africa rather than transiting through the Red Sea.”<\/p>\n

This lengthy detour adds about 10 to 12 days of sailing time to each trip, and extra fuel, which\u00a0previous analysis<\/a>\u00a0has estimated to cost companies about an extra $1m (\u00a3748,735) per round trip.<\/p>\n

Mr Freer added that the impact on commercial shipping has continued to this day.<\/p>\n

“Within about two months of the initial attacks [in October 2023], shipping transiting through the Red Sea had dropped by about 60% to 70%, and it has stayed at that level ever since, even with the ceasefires,” he told us.<\/p>\n

Even though Houthi strikes are now less frequent, he added, there are still “just enough attacks to convince shipping companies it is not worth running the risk of returning” to the Red Sea route.<\/p>\n

Iran has been accused by the US, UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia of smuggling missiles and other weapons to the Houthis by sea, in violation of a UN Security Council resolution since the armed group ousted Yemen’s internationally-recognised government from much of north-western Yemen 10 years ago, sparking a devastating civil war. Iran denies this.<\/p>\n

On 5 June this year, Pahlawan was found guilty of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists; providing material support to the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guard Corps’ weapons of mass destruction programme; conspiring to and transporting explosive devices to the Houthis, knowing these explosives would be used to cause harm; and threatening his crew.<\/p>\n

“Pahlawan was not only a seasoned smuggler,” prosecutors said, “he knew what he was smuggling and its intended use.”<\/p>\n

In a final plea to the court for leniency, Pahlawan’s lawyer wrote that life for Pahlawan’s wife had long been estranged from her family because of her marriage to him, and that since his arrest, her and her child’s lives had become “extremely difficult and harsh”.<\/p>\n

“Since the jury verdict, Mr Pahlawan’s singular focus in their telephone conversations is the wellbeing of his family,” his attorney said. “He does not talk about himself or his fate. He cries with worry over what will become of his wife and child.”<\/p>\n

But the court ruled that his high sentence was “appropriate due to the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant”.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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