|
Trending Topics
|
Weapons Flowing from Europe to Middle East
(Guardian-UK) Ivan Angelovski - Eastern European countries have approved the discreet sale of more than one billion euros worth of weapons in the past four years to Middle Eastern countries that are known to ship arms to Syria, an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) 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 from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania. Eastern and central European weapons and ammunition, identified from videos and photos posted on social media, are now being used by Western-backed Free Syrian Army units, but are also in the hands of fighters from Islamist groups. Since 2012, 806 million euros worth of weapons and ammunition went to Saudi Arabia, Jordan secured 155 million euros worth of weapons, while the UAE spent 135 million and Turkey 87 million.