... an investigative journalism report concludes that it was CIA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and UAE...
Eastern European countries have approved the discreet sale of more than €1bn of weapons in the past four years to Middle Eastern countries that are known to ship arms to Syria, an investigation has found.
Thousands of assault rifles such as AK-47s, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons and heavy machine guns are being routed through a new arms pipeline from the Balkans to the Arabian peninsula and countries bordering Syria.
The suspicion is that much of the weaponry is being sent into Syria, fuelling the five-year civil war, according to a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Arms export data, UN reports, plane tracking, and weapons contracts examined during a year-long investigation reveal how the munitions were sent east from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania.
End-user certificates – official documents drawn up when receiving an export licence – issued by the Saudi defence ministry to a Serbian arms dealer, as well as a cache of contracts obtained by BIRN and OCCRP, revealed the scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.
It ranged from hundreds of ageing T-55 and T-72 tanks to millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers, although it is not clear what was delivered. Weapons and ammunition listed include materiel from the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine and Czech Republic, much of which is present in large quantities in Syria. source
Eastern European countries have approved the discreet sale of more than €1bn of weapons in the past four years to Middle Eastern countries that are known to ship arms to Syria, an investigation has found.Thousands of assault rifles such as AK-47s, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons and heavy machine guns are being routed through a new arms pipeline from the Balkans to the Arabian peninsula and countries bordering Syria.
The suspicion is that much of the weaponry is being sent into Syria, fuelling the five-year civil war, according to a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Arms export data, UN reports, plane tracking, and weapons contracts examined during a year-long investigation reveal how the munitions were sent east from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania.
End-user certificates – official documents drawn up when receiving an export licence – issued by the Saudi defence ministry to a Serbian arms dealer, as well as a cache of contracts obtained by BIRN and OCCRP, revealed the scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.
It ranged from hundreds of ageing T-55 and T-72 tanks to millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers, although it is not clear what was delivered. Weapons and ammunition listed include materiel from the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine and Czech Republic, much of which is present in large quantities in Syria. source
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