15, April
Robin Monotti: UK Arms Shipment to Israel Seized…
UK Arms Shipment to Israel Seized in Belgium Belgian authorities have refused to name the arms firms that exported the goods amid the opening of a criminal investigation into the matter, John McEvoy reports. "Two shipments of military components bound for Israel from the U.K. have been seized in Belgium, it can be revealed. This follows an alert issued to authorities in Brussels by Declassified, Belgian NGO Vredesactie, Irish news outlet The Ditch and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Belgium has strict laws on the transshipment of military items to Israel through its ports and airports, including a ban on overflights carrying weaponry through its airspace. Customs officials were notified last month of a suspicious military shipment travelling from Britain to Israel through Liege airport. The cargo was subsequently searched by a specialised engineer who found “the presence of fire control systems and spare parts for military aircraft.” Walloon Minister-President Adrien Dolimont said: “We have to see if the legislation has been respected. Here, in this case, it’s clear that it hasn’t.” Another Belgian government spokesperson told Declassified: “No transit licence request was issued; if it had been, it would have been refused.” The Shipment The two consignments arrived in Liege on March 24 and were scheduled for onward air transport to Tel Aviv on a Challenge Airlines service two days later, according to shipping documents seen by Declassified. The U.K. arms export codes associated with the goods were ML10 and ML5, which relate to military aircraft and fire control components. Hans Lammerant, a spokesperson for Vredesactie, [a peace advocacy group] said: “We also have information on 17 transits in the past. So it was clearly a regular transit from Bierset [Liege] to Israel.” The Belgian authorities have refused to name the arms firms who exported the goods amid the opening of a criminal investigation into the matter. However, a spokesperson for the Walloon government confirmed that the initial complaint focussed on Moog, a U.S. aerospace firm with factories across Britain, and did not refute that some of the seized items may have belonged to that company. Customs brokerage documents seen by Declassified indicate that some of the earlier shipments from Britain to Israel via Liege airport were sent by Moog. A post code associated with the company’s factory in Wolverhampton, for instance, sent items to Israel through Belgium last December with goods description “servo actuator.” Moog manufactures actuators for the M-346, an aircraft which is used to train Israeli pilots to fly advanced fighter aircraft including the F-35 and F-16. Actuators are machines that control the movement of other components, and can be used to help steer an aircraft."