*CORRECTION: A gun exported by a Serbian manufacturer to a Florida-based company was not involved in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, as the gun matching the reported serial number reported by Interpol to have been used in the attacks has been in Mexican government custody since March of this year, according to U.S. authorities. A report by The Associated Press published Dec. 11 was based on information from the Serbian manufacturer, Zastava, which cited an advisory from the Serbian Interior Ministry that, in turn, quoted Interpol authorities. Interpol said it could not provide additional information on where it got the gun’s serial number because it acts only as an intermediary for exchanging information among police agencies.
BELGRADE, Serbia -- One of the guns linked to Islamic militants in the Paris attacks that killed 130 people was exported to the United States in 2013, the head of a Serbian arms factory said Thursday.*
Milojko Brzakovic of the Zastava arms factory said the M92 semi-automatic pistol's serial number matched one his company delivered to a U.S. online arms dealer in May 2013. It was not clear how the gun got back to Europe.
At least seven of the weapons used or discovered after the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris have been identified as being produced by the Serbian factory in Kragujevac, in central Serbia. Most were manufactured before Yugoslavia broke up in a civil war in the 1990s, and most of those are modified versions of the Soviet AK-47, or Kalashnikov.
Brzakovic said all the guns were delivered legally but later could have found their way into illegal channels.
"One was delivered to Bosnia in 1983; one to Skopje, Macedonia, in December 1987; one to Golubici, near Knin [Croatia] in 1988; one to Zagreb [Croatia] 1987," he said.
He said the M92 pistol "is a semi-automatic weapon, a hunting and sporting weapon ... it cannot fire barrage fire, only single shots ... which are legal in America."
He said it was exported to an online arms seller in the United States, the Florida-based Century Arms, to which his factory exports up to 25,000 hunting and sports guns every year. He said the gun was delivered as a semi-automatic, but he did not know whether someone turned it into an automatic after delivery. The "shortened Kalashnikov" is listed by U.S. arms dealers as selling for about $460.
Messages seeking comment from Century Arms, the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were not immediately returned.
Brzakovic insisted that all arms exports from Serbia are under strict government control.
"We submit a request to our government to give consent and authorize the export. Until we receive that, we make no contract. Once we get a permission to export, we make a contract and arrange the dynamics," he said.
He said it would be wrong to accuse the Zastava factory of selling weapons to terrorists.
"Here's where the weapons ended, there's the data. Zastava cannot be blamed for where it went afterward," Brzakovic said.
But he agreed that an illicit gun deal could have taken place even after arms were delivered legally.
"Wherever there are wars, there are bigger possibilities for abuse and to hide the channels for guns. They end up where they shouldn't," he said, adding: "We have a database in the factory for the last 50 years, we know where a gun has been delivered."
Information for this article was contributed by Curt Anderson of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/11/2015
*CORRECTION: A gun exported by a Serbian manufacturer to a Florida-based company was not involved in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, as the gun matching the reported serial number reported by Interpol to have been used in the attacks has been in Mexican government custody since March of this year, according to U.S. authorities. A report by The Associated Press published Dec. 11 was based on information from the Serbian manufacturer, Zastava, which cited an advisory from the Serbian Interior Ministry that, in turn, quoted Interpol authorities. Interpol said it could not provide additional information on where it got the gun’s serial number because it acts only as an intermediary for exchanging information among police agencies.