On 15 July Panamanian officials at Manzanillo port, next to the northern end of the Canal, boarded the Chong Chon Gang, a North Korean ship with a declared cargo of unrefined sugar from Cuba and ostensibly headed for North Korea. The boarding party was officially conducting a search for drugs. Initially resisted by the crew, they did not find any. Instead they found in the first two containers they opened, hidden under bags of sugar, a sizable batch of arms, including parts of anti-aircraft rocket systems and engines of MiG-2 bis interceptor fighters. The captain and 35 crew members were placed under arrest on suspicion of posing a threat to Panamanian security, and also of attempting to breach the United Nations Security Council’s 2006 embargo on arms imports to and exports from North Korea (expanded in 2009).End of preview - This article contains approximately 482 words.
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