Kiev - Two Ukrainians convicted of selling weapons illegally to China, Iran, and Eritrea have been killed in prison, Sehodnia newspaper reported on Monday. Both victims died of suffocation in Kiev Prison Number 13, a high-security installation containing mostly repeat offenders.
Oleg Orlov, 60, reportedly died in his sleep after a cell-mate throttled him with a rope made from an undershirt. A third inmate in the room did not intervene in the killing.
A second inmate also serving time at the same prison in connection with illicit weapons sales abroad was choked to death after a fight with another prisoner. Prison officials were investing both murders, according to the newspaper article.
Orlov had been serving a sentence for participating in illegal weapons sales during the 1990s. A Kiev court found him guilty of selling high-tech cruise missiles to China, radio-location detectors to Eritrea, and multiple-rocket launch systems to Iran.
He had been working for the state weapons export monopoly at the time.
Ukraine's government later denied it had anything to do with the sales, and prosecuted officials involved in the allegedly "rogue" deal.
Audio tapes secretly recorded in then-President Leonid Kuchma's office, and later made public by Kuchma's opponents, seem to show the Kuchma administration was directly involved in the deals.
The US later accused Kuchma's government of attempting to sell anti-stealth technology to Iraq shortly before the US invaded.
Orlov was an associate of Valery Malev, the head of Ukraine's national weapons export company at the time. Malev died in a suspicious 2002 automobile accident.
As a result of Orlov's death, few witnesses with direct knowledge of Ukraine's weapons sales abroad during the 1990s are left alive, according to the Ukrainska Kriminal web site.
