Meanwhile, soldiers on the frontline are sharing bizarre images. They are manually grinding mortar shells to make them fit their weapons. The scarcity is only getting worse, and is now hindering Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

This investigation reconstructs the dynamics behind the scenes, examines why the political decision making takes so long and exposes the weak spots of European defence: national interests, fragmented standards and a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude in the arms industry.

On July 7, the EU commission finally struck a deal. It must still be endorsed by the Council and Parliament and is expected to be signed and enter into force by the end of July.

On July 11 and 12, NATO will meet for a summit in Vilnius (Lithuania). Ammunition is a key item on the agenda.

METHODS

With a coalition of media, including the Kyiv Independent and the Dutch Investigative Desk, we spent six months examining the main reasons for Europe’s ongoing struggle to ramp up ammunition production.

We interviewed dozens of sources with insight into the problem: industry insiders, diplomats, including those who were present at crucial moments in Estonian backrooms, and defence-experts who gave early warnings. We supplemented our access to diplomatic and political sources with findings from the frontline in Ukraine, allowing us to show how the failure to solve the issues was directly affecting the country’s ability to defend itself.

We correlated what we were told with data from meeting notes, obtained through Freedom of Information requests and open sources.

This combination of approaches allowed us to build a very detailed reconstruction of who said what when, with more than 250 data points, all referencing a meeting, a call or a step in the process.

STORYLINES

The Kyiv Independent starts with a scene from the frontline. As Ukraine was throwing all its forces at a counteroffensive in Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts in early September last year, some soldiers defending the eastern front struggled with lack of ammunition.

When long-anticipated military aid arrived at one of the brigades stationed on the Donbas frontline, the soldiers were over the moon. But disappointment soon followed when they learned that the ammunition they received is useless: Finnish mortar bombs of 120mm calibre didn’t squeeze into their Mod. 63 Italian mortars, despite them being the same calibre. .

Taras, a commander of a mortar battery, was tasked to find the way out of the situation. He bought a grinder and manually trimmed each of the eight tail fins of the 1,000 mortar bombs.

“It was dangerous, but I had a task, and my infantry was relying only on me. At the time when we received these shells, we had nothing else for the brigade artillery,” said Taras.

Dutch media partner Follow the Money leads with a moment of political misjudgement. While warnings were given within a month of the war’s onset, coordinated and effective measures were postponed. “If the war goes on for a long time, the support cannot be sustained,” said Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg’s top military adviser, at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in March last year. “Be aware: we deliver from half-empty warehouses. You also have to replenish it very quickly.”

Yet hardly anyone else was concerned about possible ammunition shortages, says Camille Grand, then NATO assistant secretary general for defence investments. “We were under the impression that the war would not last long.”

The post At war without ammo appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

Stockpiles in Europe were quickly depleted and weapons and ammunition are now being sourced from as far afield as Kuwait, Kenya, Sudan and the Philippines. “It’s a fucking chaos,” said one of the brokers who spoke to us for this story.

While some European companies have grasped the opportunity to make excessive profits from the increased demand for arms amidst the chaos of war, the unprecedented high prices and lengthy delivery timeframes are a frustration for the Ukrainian army attempting to repel Russian forces on the battlefield.

High prices for arms also create political tensions in Europe, where EU member states providing military aid to Ukraine are currently only being reimbursed 50% of their costs by the European Peace Facility (EPF) because current prices outstrip the available budgets. Poland, which is responsible for more than half of Europe’s military aid to Ukraine, feels particularly affected.

METHODS

Lighthouse Reports obtained detailed documents about a €6.8 million deal for rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) that took place in March last year.

Financial documents provided unprecedented insight into the mechanics of an arms deal. The money trail led from the Czech Republic, to Estonia, to the Netherlands, as the arms were procured and delivered to Ukraine via Poland.

The documents suggest that the Estonian broker central to the trade retained €2 million, or just under 30% of the deal’s value as an apparent commission. Sources familiar with the industry say such a commission amounts to outrageous profiteering, even under the unique circumstances of the time.

We were able to corroborate the information in these documents with publicly available trade data from ImportGenius and national import-export databases of strategic goods.

During the months-long investigation we also approached dozens of brokers to understand the dynamics of supplying the Ukrainian army in wartime. Many were not willing to talk, citing the risk of being targeted with reprisals by Russian agents active in Europe.

However, eight brokers shared their experiences with us and answered questions on condition of anonymity. These brokers allowed us to set the Estonian- and Dutch-brokered RPG deal in the wider perspective and to confirm the 30% commission it generated for the Estonian firm was “unrealistic” by industry standards.

We also spoke to a dozen experts, company personnel and politicians to figure out the structure of the deal and other rationales behind it, such as disguising the origins of the arms and some of the parties involved.

STORYLINES

While Russian troops were murdering civilians in Bucha, the Ukrainian army was threatened by an ammunition crisis and Estonians were donating money generously to Ukraine. Yet while this was going on, as our Estonian partner Eesti Ekspress points out, an Estonian arms broker was pocketing a commission worth almost one-third of a shipment of anti-tank weaponry meant for the Ukrainian army.

The Kyiv Independent’s report also highlights the urgent timing of this particular arms deal: “In one backyard in Bucha, Russian soldiers slaughter three – an elderly couple and a young woman. In Mariupol, Russian fighter jets drop bombs on the drama theatre, killing between 100 and 600 people sheltering there. On the very same day, Dutch broker Applied Research Laboratory Europe (ARLE) B.V. billed the Estonian company Bristol Trust OÜ [for the RPGs], according to the documents seen by [Estonian publication] Ekspress.”

This is not just a story about excessive profiteering by European arms brokers, writes the Kyiv Independent, it has a direct and negative impact on the Ukrainian war effort: “The increased prices affected Ukraine’s allies’ spending power. The higher the prices are, the fewer weapons Ukraine ends up receiving to defend itself.”

The story breaks at a moment when the Ukrainian government is making headlines for launching a crackdown on officials accused of profiteering from wartime procurement of military materials and civilian aid.

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The post War profiteers appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

Those weapons are sold to Egypt despite evidence of repression and war crimes by the authorities. The Egyptian navy in particular went on a buying spree, spending billions or euros in Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

When the Dutch state was taken to court for approving these arms export licenses, their defence was that while the Egyptian army is known for human rights abuses, the Egyptian navy is not involved and the Dutch equipment (a naval communication system) is not used for repression. This investigation proves them wrong.

METHODS

This investigation combined open source methods, human sources and scrutinising documents. Following the paper trail helped us reconstruct how the deal was handled and defended by Dutch authorities. We could show how an essential functionality of the military equipment – support of special forces – was withheld from a briefing to the Dutch parliament.

The open source part of the investigation analysed hours of visual footage – from Egyptian government propaganda to user generated content found on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok – for evidence of the direct and indirect involvement of the Egyptian navy in war crimes and human rights violations.

For example, the image below is taken from a video by the Egyptian Ministry of Defence. Based on his shoulder patch, this soldier is part of the Egyptian navy’s special forces. He is patrolling together with ground forces. We geolocated him north of Sheikh Al-Zuwaid in Egypt’s Northern Sinai.

In this area the Egyptian army is running a reign of terror under the guise of counter-terrorism, with school closures, summary executions and large-scale destruction of houses. Further down this street, dozens of houses have been razed to the ground:

The demolitions are likely to be war crimes, according to Human Rights Watch.

We found more evidence of the Egyptian navy’s involvement in violence against civilians when we reached out to local fishermen from Gaza. Five different fishermen all told us similar stories: they were violently attacked by the Egyptian navy, often shot at without warning and detained for months in Northern Sinai. Their boats – their main means of income – were confiscated and never returned.

STORYLINES

The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant told the story of 18-year-old Tariq from the Gaza Strip.

In the middle of the night, when everyone in Gaza was asleep, Tariq was startled by a rattling sound. It was pitch dark so he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Tariq was out sailing with his two brothers. He comes from a Palestinian fishing family. Every night he and his brothers fished for bream and sardines, which they sold at the market during the day.

In the darkness, two small boats carrying soldiers in desert-colored camouflage clothing came alongside the brothers’ vessel. They opened fire without warning.Tariq felt a burning sensation on his left arm but – a bullet had just grazed him. The soldiers entered the boat and arrested him. His brothers were on the floor. Ahmed, 20 years old, was hit in the chest and stomach, and died a few hours later. The face of 25-year-old Mohammed was riddled with bullets. He died instantly.

A year and a half after that September night in 2020, Tariq told us his story via video link, sitting in a lawyer’s office in the occupied Gaza Strip. For fear of reprisals, he asked us to change his and his brothers’ names.

Egypt shares a land and sea border with the Gaza Strip. It helps maintain the blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since 2007 when the militant Palestinian movement Hamas won elections. Since then, numerous UN reports have found that the blockade violates international humanitarian law, as the population is left with no place to go and is collectively punished. Egyptian authorities say they want to stop terrorism and smuggling from the Palestinian territories. From Tariq’s story and documents that support his account, it appears that innocent deaths are involved.

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The post Turning a blind eye to Egypt’s violent navy appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

Despite being a hot topic for public debate, no one really knows what the impact is of the arms that are licensed for export from this peace-loving country. Except for formal post-shipment controls by the Swiss authorities themselves, a thorough investigation into the impact of Swiss arms has so far not been carried out. Until early 2021, that is, when Swiss public broadcaster RTS and Lighthouse Reports joined forces on this investigation.

Our investigation found a big gap between the official justifications for arms exports and the context of their actual deployment overseas. We uncovered armoured vehicles exported for a humanitarian mission that ended up being used by an infamous Brazilian police unit in violent raids in the poor favelas of Rio de Janeiro. We also found that planes sold as civilian goods were converted into highly effective military surveillance planes supporting US and Afghan airstrikes in Afghanistan, often resulting in the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties.

METHODS

Lighthouse Reports has a history of tracking European arms exports. For years we have followed how EU-manufactured armaments have spread across the globe. We rely on little more than a laptop with an internet connection. It has allowed us to scrape export databases, analyse corporate websites and brochures, screen all kinds of (semi-) official media channels and gather user-generated content and footage from conflict zones.

As with many investigations, the devil is in the detail. To substantiate claims about Swiss PC-12 planes being used in aerial bombings in Afghanistan, we identified unique features of the computer screens inside a PC-12. To determine the exact origin of a weapon, we documented incremental modifications to the design of rifles over time , and compared these against export timelines. And to corroborate footage of bombings released by the Afghan authorities, we geolocated their videos and matched them with user-generated content from eye-witnesses.

After a five months-long investigation we cross-checked our OSINT findings with sources on the ground. In Afghanistan we found witnesses of a bombing we had analysed. And in Brazil we traced survivors of a brutal raid by the Brazilian police, who had entered their favelas in Swiss armoured vehicles.

STORYLINES

We broke the investigation down into separate chapters tracking three quintessential Swiss-made weapons: the Pilatus PC-12 aircraft, armoured vehicles made by General Dynamics European Land Systems (previously known as Mowag) and the famous Sig Sauer rifles.

SwissArms Case 1: PC-12 and civilian casualties

Pilatus exported 18 PC-12 aeroplanes to the US between 2013 and 2015. The exports were not subject to any kind of control, because they were classified officially as civilian aircraft. Yet, with a few minor tweaks, they become the military eyes in the sky that Pilatus’s PC-12 is famous for.

Soon after, the militarised aeroplanes were re-exported to Afghanistan where they quickly became a critical asset for US and Afghan airstrikes. For all airstrikes, a former member of the Afghan Ministry of Defence told us on condition of anonymity: “It was mandatory, it (the PC-12) had to confirm the target.”

On July 15, 2021, one of those airstrikes hit a market in Shahada district, Badakhshan province. According to Pajhwok it killed 13 Taliban fighters and 8 civilians. Footage shared by the Afghan Ministry of Defence shows a screen (left) that is identical to the screen inside a PC-12 (right). It not only allowed us to confirm the PC-12’s involvement, but also to geolocate it to Shahada district.

An Afghan colleague went to Shahada to interview eye-witnesses. He met Abdul Zabor, who lost two sons in the bombing: “A white plane circled for an hour. The mujahideen knew about these planes and their dangers, so they left. In the market people went in all directions, we had no idea.”

SwissArms Case 2: Piranhas for Haiti end up in Brazil

It was on the way back from a football match in 2015 that the life of Vitor Borges, then 29, changed drastically. He was returning home with a group of friends when shots fired by a soldier inside an armoured vehicle left him a paraplegic with an amputated leg.

That armoured vehicle was a Swiss-made Piranha. And our investigation reveals that the Piranha armoured vehicles used in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, including the one that left Vitor partially paralysed, were exported with a humanitarian purpose – to equip a deployment of Brazilian Marines serving on a UN humanitarian mission to Haiti.

But when Brazilian NGO Institutio Sou da Paz later questioned the use of the Piranha in Brazil, the authorities confirmed that these vehicles were used in military operations in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. In many cases the vehicles were part of the BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) – a group responsible for committing extrajudicial executions, according to Human Rights Watch.

Another raid where these vehicles were used was the São Francisco operation in the Maré complex between 2014 and 2015, which left 15 people dead. One of them was Jefferson Rodrigues. “The Brazilian police are the deadliest police in the world,” says his mother in an interview with our media partner RTS. According to Human Rights Watch, the police killed 6,416 people in Rio de Janeiro in 2020 alone, 79.1% of those killed were black.

In 2014 and 2019 two inspections by the Swiss Secretariat of Economic Affairs in Brazil found no anomalies in the use of the imported armoured vehicles.

SwissArms Case 3: The Yemen war

When Swiss newspaper Blick reported the use of Sig Sauer rifles by the Saudi forces in Yemen, the Swiss Ministry of Economic Affairs replied: “We have no evidence of these weapons being used in Yemen.” On the contrary, our investigation found solid evidence and presented it to the ministry. They did not respond.

In a video posted on YouTube on April 2, 2017 by a Saudi Arabian media channel we can see a contingent of the Saudi Arabian Special Naval Security Group carrying Sig Sauer carbines. A commander in the video outlines how this operation is linked to the naval blockade of Yemeni ports.

Sig Sauer also produces rifles in the US and Germany, but given the specifics of this weapon and the timeframe of the export, they can only be the SG 552, which is manufactured exclusively in Switzerland.

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The post From Switzerland with love appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

Just three weeks later Systematic’s British subsidiary applied for an export permit to the United Arab Emirates for the same products previously sold from Denmark. And until today, Systematic still supplies UAE with military software, now simply exported from Denmark to the Emirates via its British subsidiary.

“Using a foreign subsidiary for exports is undermining the Danish government’s decision not to arm the Emirates,” according to William Hartung, an international arms trade expert at Center for International Policy .

Experts and human rights organizations say Systematic may be co-responsible for possible war crimes and that its export is in violation of both EU and UN rules on arms exports.

The publications led to a police investigation into potential wrongdoing by Systematic.

METHODS

A months-long joint investigation by DanWatch, Danish TV2, Bellingcat and Lighthouse Reports used official documents obtained through freedom of information requests scraped job advertisements and social media analysis to piece together how the Danish company Systematic circumvented the arms export ban for the Emirates.

The IT company’s ongoing deliveries of military software to the Emirates appear, among other things, from a number of job ads published on Emirati job portals in 2020 and 2021.
They show that since the Danish export ban came into force in 2018, Systematic has advertised several times to hire professionals to supply and implement SitaWare within the Emirati military systems.

“Our engagement in the United Arab Emirates is growing, and we need an ambitious and experienced manager”, a job posting from the summer of 2020 reads. It further states that Systematic’s office in Abu Dhabi is looking for a project manager for “the delivery, deployment and support” of the SitaWare and IRIS product packages for the Emirati Navy.
The job postings also show that the joint venture with the UAE Armed Forces takes place in close co-operation with the Danish – not the UK-based – head office.

The job ad from Systematic specifies that the project manager, who is assigned to implement SitaWare for the Emirati Navy, must also be able to pay regular visits to Systematic’s headquater in Aarhus, and must possess a “natural ability to build bridges between Systematic’s office UAE and our headquarters in Aarhus, Denmark”.

STORYLINES

In Denmark, exporting military equipment to the United Arab Emirates is forbidden.

In late autumn 2018, the Danish government suspended all new arms export authorizations to the tiny Gulf state, due to a perceived risk that products could be used in the ongoing war in Yemen, in which UAE has played and continues to play a leading role.

At the time, 85,000 children had already starved to death as a result of a war that has prompted what the UN describes as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

Today, almost three years later, the UAE’s war in Yemen goes on. And so does business in the UAE for Denmark’s biggest IT company, Systematic A/S.

Despite the export ban, Systematic continues to supply and implement SitaWare, an advanced command and control system, to the Emirati military.

Human rights organizations consider it highly problematic for a Danish company to continue supplying military software to the UAE, which stands accused of committing serious war crimes in Yemen. “There is a very high risk that military equipment exported to the Emirates will be used to commit serious human rights violations and breaches of international international law in Yemen”, said Patrick Wilken, an arms control expert at Amnesty International.

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The post Circumventing a Danish export ban appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

For the past two years, Lighthouse Reports has lifted the lid on murky EU arms exports, revealing where weapons end up and how they get there. But our follow-up investigations have revealed that sales are just part of a broader picture. Lucrative after-sale contracts drive profits and often leave companies with an unseen stake in controversial conflicts.

Our investigation pointed to huge discrepancies in the control and scrutiny of post-sale services. In some European countries, practices are extremely lenient and fail to fully implement international and European arms export prohibitions. France, we found, was a case in point.

We traced major arms maintenance deals between French defense manufacturers and the United Arab Emirates, which deploys fighter jets in Libya. French companies were also hired to train Saudi soldiers fighting in Yemen, we found.

METHODS

A new sub-set of investigations undertaken by our arms tracking newsroom jointly with the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) reveals the scale of ongoing and substantial post-sale agreements between European arms manufacturers and repressive regimes.

Also known as the aftermarket, post-sale services are a major pillar of the arms industry and a key source of its global revenues. So we started our investigation by digging into  the annual reports of European arms producers and looking into corporate ownership and shell companies. We then combined the intelligence we gleaned from this process with imagery from open sources ranging from satellite data to information on social media and literature from conference brochures.

Through in-depth investigations of specific post-sales services, our project shed new light on the shadowy world of arms dealings. Its legal methodology was based on the first comprehensive review of the laws governing such deals and on established legal practices.

STORYLINES

When customers purchase a weapons system like a fighter jet or a howitzer they are not just paying for a complex piece of hardware but also for future updates, training and a broader maintenance scheme.

These post-sale services have created ongoing and extensive relations, and a dependency, between EU supplying states and companies on the one hand and abusive end-users on the other. Through such ‘invisible links’, European companies and states have contributed to serious violations of international law, sometimes amounting to war crimes as they enable proxy wars. Despite their scale and significance, such activities remain largely hidden from the public eye and are under-regulated by both international and domestic law.

We zoomed in on an airstrike at a migrant detention centre in Tajoura in 2019 which killed at least 50 migrants. The United Nations suggested it was attacked by a UAE-owned Mirage fighter jet amid widespread reports of the UAE deploying jets in Libya. After proving the presence of those jets in Libya, we uncovered a large maintenance scheme worth several hundred million euros. The deal, signed between the UAE and France’s Dassault Aviation, Thales Group and MBDA, demonstrated the ongoing commitment of the industry to supporting the UAE Mirages. This in spite of mounting evidence of the country’s role in the Libyan proxy war.

But it is not just Libya. In spite of a public outcry over the Yemeni war, France allowed Caesar howitzers to be sent to Saudi Arabia. Later, French companies were hired to train the soldiers behind the trigger in both France and Saudi Arabia between  2016 and 2017 and quite possibly beyond. Neither the company nor French authorities denied that training commitments were ongoing.

We found that French companies DCI Groupe, Thales as well as RUAG (A Swiss-based company with a French branch), continued providing training on mission-critical skills to Saudi Arabia’s military personnel as the protracted armed conflict in Yemen raged on and a humanitarian crisis escalated. We also discovered fresh evidence that the French government continues to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite being aware of the risks its weapons pose to civilians and the fact that its practices violate international humanitarian laws.

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The post EU’s Invisible Links to Wars appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

When US police used excessive force against Black Lives Matter protesters last year, new questions were raised about UK exports amid indications that British-made crowd-control equipment was used in the crackdown. Britain nonetheless continued to license exports, citing “no evidence” that its equipment was being used.

Our investigation suggests otherwise.

We managed to trace the security equipment that was sold to the US and deployed to suppress demonstrators after BLM protests intensified. And we lifted the veil on the many conflicts that have  benefited from  Britain’s iconic British Accuracy International sniper rifles. Marketed by the manufacturer as “the world’s finest” sniper rifles, we traced them to several war zones, gleaning evidence that they are wielded by UK-backed Russian soldiers in Ukraine, among others. That those weapons are in the hands of Russian forces exposes the flaws in the UK’s licensing system, experts told us while a British defence official said the findings were “concerning” and would be investigated.

METHODS

Using open-source material, and geospatial intelligence to corroborate findings, this investigation traced British-made UK small arms and security equipment – from licensing, to export through to deployment in conflict zones around the world.

A wide-reaching and complex investigation,  it was executed in three stages. The first step was to cast the net wide, essentially compiling an inventory of the UK’s arms exports before determining which have the potential to end up in the wrong hands and wreak the most harm. During a months-long investigation a core team prepared a list of leads, which was divided across small groups of investigators that got to work on scouring open source evidence of the weapons’ deployment. The key findings were published by  the Guardian, Bellingcat and Sky News.

STORYLINES

The death in May 2020 of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, while in police custody triggered mass protests in the US and beyond. But behind the renewed debate about police brutality and racism, questions about arms exports arose. . Ten days after Floyd’s death,  the British government launched a review to assess whether it should continue exporting  its crowd-control kits to the US.

British government officials and diplomats insist that there is as yet “no evidence” that UK-made anti-riot gear was used by police during America’s Black Lives Matter protests.

Our joint investigation with Sky News, The Guardian and Bellingcat, however pointed to the widespread use of British anti-riot shields by US police officers, often in violent confrontations with protesters.

That was not the only example of a lack of oversight in UK arms exports. While the UK insists it has strict controls on its arms exports, and that its licensing system is one of the world’s most “robust” and “transparent,” we managed to trace British-made sniper rifles to conflict-ridden nations including  Yemen, Syria and Russian-occupied Ukraine,

Our investigation uncovered evidence suggesting that Russian special forces have been using British-made sniper rifles, even though the British government insists  it has never approved the export of these weapons to Moscow. We even found a British weapon in the hands of Medvedev, the former president of Russia.

Verified by independent weapons experts, the evidence raises serious questions about how Russia was able to acquire the guns. At the very least, it exposed flaws in the UK’s licensing system.  Admitting that the findings are “concerning,” the chair of the UK’s defence select committee said the panel would carry out an investigation into UK arms sales.

We also found British-made arms in Syria to Yemen with our research indicating that the UK’s Accuracy International sniper rifles have been used by Saudi forces in Yemen and Turkish special forces in Syria. Again, the UK’s response to findings was defensive and far from illuminating with a spokesman commenting that the UK “operates one of the most comprehensive export control regimes in the world.”

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The post UK’s toothless arms control appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

These services for the Airbus 400M include maintenance in both Spain and Turkey and training for all pilots involved, including regular refresher courses.  Airbus also has a major maintenance deal for the A400M with the inter-governmental Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) that explicitly cites Turkey as a customer.

According to legal experts, Airbus’s support for Turkish A400M aircraft being deployed in the Libya conflict constitutes a violation by these states and corporations of their obligations.

Our findings have already had an impact, prompting calls for policy changes and a question in the European Parliament.

METHODS

In this investigation, our team combined traditional reporting methods with open-source intelligence techniques to document how Turkey’s A400M fleet is completely reliant on support by Airbus. Evaluating flight radar data along with sightings by plane spotters, we used information gleaned from  job advertisements, satellite imagery, company brochures and internal documents to piece together the puzzle.

When the maintenance is carried out at the aircraft’s home base in Kayseri, Turkey, an Airbus team has oversight, with Airbus mechanics regularly travelling to Turkey, we discovered. When the aircraft fly to Spain for maintenance, they land at the Airbus facility in Getafe. The A400 pilots are trained — regularly and rigorously, it appears — by Airbus at its headquarters in Seville. And OCCAR’s extensive maintenance commitment for the A400M is effectively directed by Airbus, we found.

As the actual liability stemming from these maintenance agreements is complicated and technical, we worked with our partners at Global Legal Action Network and compiled an extensive legal analysis to accompany our findings.

STORYLINES

Last year, when Germany held the European Union’s rotating presidency, the German government had expressed its commitment to mediating in the Libya war and enforcing the UN arms embargo. And it followed through: the EU imposed sanctions on three companies, including a Turkish one, that are accused of violating the embargo on Libya.
But there were also violations of the embargo closer to home, it turns out. Turkey, which continues to maintain a de facto air bridge with Libya, transporting arms and fighters to the war-torn state, has counted on a European-made military cargo plane to conduct these flights.

Post-sale services have created a strong dependency between the EU states and corporations that supply arms and the abusive end-users. Through such  “invisible links,” these European actors have contributed to serious violations of international law, including war crimes, and in some cases enabled proxy wars. But despite their scale and significance, such activities are under-regulated by both international and domestic law and have remained, for the most part, hidden from the public eye.

Not anymore. The debate fuelled by our findings have stirred policy-makers to demand action. Reports from our Arms Tracking newsroom in Germany’s ARD and Stern Magazine prompted MPs to ask for legal reform with the former president of the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, Arnold Wallraff, describing the situation as “Absurdistan.” “If Turkey breaks the Libya embargo, such technical support must stop,” he said.

And in August last year, a question was tabled in the European Parliament on the basis of our findings, asking the European Commission to investigate services provided by the Airbus Group and authorized by EU states — Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Italy as members of the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) — and adopt enforcement measures where necessary.

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The post Airbus maintaining Turkey’s war appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

Among other findings, the investigation determined the sale by Airbus of half a dozen Spanish A330 MRTT refueling tankers to the Saudi air force. We gathered, and verified, evidence on how these tankers support bombing missions in Yemen. We also discovered that some of these Saudi planes regularly return to Iberia’s plant in La Muñoza for maintenance. All this in clear violation of the European Union regulations and Spanish law. Among our most compelling findings was visual evidence of an A330 MRTT tanker aircraft flying to Yemen to refuel Saudi jets.

METHODS

The investigation was carried out by a team of journalists using the latest in open-source intelligence methods for journalists and civil society for which they received specialist training from Lighthouse. Participants made immediate use of the new skills and tools to sift through data and scour social media for evidence of Spain’s export tactics. Geolocation and chronolocation techniques helped us corroborate evidence of obvious or potential breaches of European regulations governing arms sales.

The A330 MRTT tanker aircraft that we determined had been refuelling Saudi jets is a case in point. The plane originally had a civilian configuration but was converted by Spanish carrier Iberia into a military refuelling jet. We were able to geolocate such planes  flying into La Munoza, near Madrid, where Iberia’s plant is located. Information gleaned from job advertisements and LinkedIn profiles provided additional proof that the converted Saudi planes were returning to Spain for maintenance.

STORYLINES

Spain’s arms industry has been going from strength to strength with exports skyrocketing to €4.3 billion in 2017 from €933 million in 2007. As a result of these record-breaking sales, Spain ranked 7th in a list of the world’s top arms exporters between 2014 and 2018.

Exporting arms comes with commitments which are not necessarily being honoured. The EU’s legally-binding Common Position on arms sales is aimed at regulating “responsible” arms exports. Member states exporting to countries that “use the military technology or equipment (…) aggressively against another country” should not be granted an export license, the regulation stipulates.

The Saudi air campaign against Yemen is a clear example of arms being used “aggressively against another country,” in contravention of the EU’s Common Position on arms exports. Saudi airstrikes have wreaked widespread deaths and destruction, razing hospitals, homes and schools along with the country’s cultural heritage, according to the Yemeni NGO Mwatana.

Yet, as the devastating war in Yemen continues, Spanish companies are maintaining the planes of the Royal Saudi Air Force fleet.

When our findings were published, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace called on the Spanish government to conduct an investigation into irregular arms exports.

A few months later a Spanish NGO backed  a request by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights ) to the International Criminal Court  to investigate exports of military equipment being sold by European companies to #Saudi Arabia and its ally in the #Yemen war, the United Arab Emirates #UAE. As suppliers of arms they are responsible for war crimes, the NGOs claim.

Our research was crucial in providing data and evidence to corroborate claims lodged with  the ICC and to demand accountability, said Pol Pareja, a journalist at El Diario.

During the same investigation, we gathered evidence of Turkish military campaigns in Syria and Cyprus supported by EU-made and -maintained A400M military transport airplanes. . Other findings include the illegal export by the Spanish company Rodman of military vessels to Morocco and the use of Spanish ammunition against protesters in Nicaragua.

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The post Spain maintains war in Yemen appeared first on Lighthouse Reports.

When UAE aircraft take off to bomb areas controlled by rebel forces in Yemen, deliberately targeting the country’s civilian population to maximize human suffering and destruction, those planes are protected by Danish anti-missile systems.

Perhaps most shocking of all is that all this is happening in spite of a Danish ban on arms exports to the Emirates. And these are just a selection examples of transgressions  documented in an investigation involving several Scandinavian media that has already had an impact: Since publication, Danish defence and aerospace manufacturer Terma is facing criminal charges for its role in contributing to the UAE’s war effort in Yemen.

Denmark is not the only culprit. Our reporting indicates that Swedish arms may also be linked to the war in Yemen.

METHODS

The investigation started as a  collaboration between NOIR, a Nordic innovation hub for visual investigation and communication, which approached Lighthouse about a possible collective project on the destination of Scandinavian arms exports. . After a core team was established, journalists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden were brought in for more on-the-ground reporting and, after some preliminary research established our key leads and angles, the actual investigation got under way – in the form of a bootcamp in Copenhagen.

The bootcamp kicked off with two days of training, including an introduction to the key tools and strategies that have proved most effective in prior investigations into the arms industry, with independent researcher Youri van der Weide and Lighthouse associate and open-source investigator, Leone Hadavi, sharing their insights. After some initial work in mixed teams, reporters were able to apply their new knowledge by following up on promising leads.

STORYLINES

In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition including the  United Arab Emirates  started an air and naval blockade against Yemen. The aim was ostensibly to block supplies from reaching areas controlled by Houthi rebels. But in fact, the blockade primarily affected the civilian population, stopping supplies of food and emergency aid as well as generator fuel for hospitals and water pumps.

The blockade was condemned by United Nations experts and several human rights organizations, which said it constituted a possible war crime by the aggressor nations. And yet it appears the coalition had help.

Our investigation documents how Danish defence manufacturer Terma exported the Baynunah-type radar system for six Emirati warships. It is those same ships that  blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen to bolster the impact of the Emirates’ military operations in the strife-torn nation. The Danish radar systems of the Scanter 2001 type – were delivered to the Emirates between 2011 and2016, a period including the first two years of the Yemen war. Facing harsh criticism from both Danish and foreign experts for not blocking those exports, the Danish authorities  eventually imposed a ban in 2018 though there are questions about its enforcement.

Using satellite images and consulting with military sources, we determined that in Yemen the Emirates have used small Archangel bombers – aircraft equipped with a self-defence system produced by Terma.

Swedish defence systems have also found their way onto UAE ships. The 2015 naval blockade relied on Swedish radar systems and naval guns, a revelation that prompted a coalition of Swedish NGOs to argue for an export ban amid a heated debate on Sweden’s involvement in stoking strife in Yemen.

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