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North Korea is now developing BALLISTIC SUBMARINES to carry nuclear warheads
Madcap dictator Kim Jong-un has authorised a huge expansion of the country’s main military dockyards in preparation for the construction of a fleet on new submarines.
The move will raise fears that the mentally unstable dictator is attempting to construct an at sea nuclear deterrent to rival Britain’s Trident programme.
The mentally unstable dictator, who is attempting to develop viable nuclear missiles, has upped his rhetoric against the West in recent months and has persistently threatened to start World War Three.
Now analysis of the Sinpo South Shipyard, on the country’s eastern coast, shows that the North Korean navy is clearing a huge harbour and has put up a massive new construction hall.
Experts at 38 North, a program at the US-Korea Institute, have examined satellite imagery which shows the true extent of the secretive country’s ambitious naval plans.
At the moment North Korea has a single small, outdated Gorae-class submarine which is neither large nor technologically advanced enough to launch nuclear missiles.
But the analysts warned: “The status of work inside the hall remains unclear, but when it is finished North Korea will be able
But the analysts warned: “The status of work inside the hall remains unclear, but when it is finished North Korea will be able to build and launch new submarines much larger than the existing Gorae-class, including a new class of ballistic missile submarines.” More here from ExpressUK.
North Korea: U.S. has crossed red line; relations on war footing
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong-un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.
Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing.
The United States and South Korea regularly conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation.
Han said North Korea believes the nature of the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North’s capital and “decapitation strikes” aimed at killing its top leadership.
Han says designating Kim himself for sanctions was the final straw. “The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the DPRK,” Han said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The United States has crossed the red-line in our showdown”, he said. “We regard this thrice cursed crime as a declaration of war.” declaration of war.”
Although North Korea had already been heavily sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile development programs, Washington’s announcement on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned.
Less than a week later, Pyongyang cut off its final official means of communications with Washington — known as the New York channel. Han said Pyongyang has made it clear that everything between the two must now be dealt with under “war law.” More here from the WashingtonTimes.
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WASHINGTON – A US policy institute said it may have located a secret facility used by North Korea in the early stages of building its program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, which if confirmed would be critical to the success of any future nuclear deal, according to a report seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The report by the Institute for Science and International Security said there has always been doubt about whether North Korea has disclosed all of its nuclear facilities. Confirming their location would be critical to the success of any future agreement to freeze and dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, it said.
The site, 27 miles (43 km) from the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, may have played a key role in development of centrifuges that refine uranium hexafluoride gas into low-enriched and highly enriched uranium, the report said.
“It is necessary to identify where North Korea enriches uranium and part of that is understanding where it has done it in the past,” said David Albright, the institute’s president.
What may once have been the early centrifuge research and development facility is believed to have been inside an aircraft parts factory inside a mountain next to Panghyon Air Base. It was located using commercial satellite imagery, the report said.
It was unclear whether the aircraft parts factory was still operational but information from defectors indicates there may be three production-scale centrifuge manufacturing plants operating in the country although their locations have not been confirmed, said Albright.
Tensions have been escalating between North Korea and South Korea, the United States and Japan over Pyongyang’s fourth underground nuclear test in January and a series of missile launches.
North Korea’s nuclear program is based on highly enriched uranium and plutonium separated from spent reactor fuel rods.
The reclusive government, which for more than a decade denied having a gas centrifuge program, in November 2010 revealed the existence of a production-scale gas centrifuge plant at Yongbyon but insisted it had no other such facilities.
In June 2000, a Japanese newspaper quoted Chinese sources as saying a facility was located inside Mount Chonma, the report said. Information recently obtained from “knowledgeable government officials” suggested the undeclared facility was associated with an underground aircraft parts factory, it said.
Working with Allsource Analysis, which interprets satellite imagery, the institute determined it most likely was Panghyon Aircraft Plant, which made parts for Soviet-supplied fighters.
The report quoted an unidentified official as saying the site could have held between 200 and 300 centrifuges. More details here.
DNC Shared Its Donor Appointment List With White House
New details have emerged about a possible “pay-to-play” scheme that surfaced in the Democratic National Committee documents released by Wikileaks last week.
DailyCaller: The Democratic National Committee’s national finance director sent a White House official who handles personnel matters a list of Democratic donors that the DNC hand-picked for appointments to federal boards and commissions.
The Daily Caller reported earlier this week that Jordan Kaplan, the DNC finance director, sought guidance from his colleagues on what donors to choose for federal appointments. Names were collected, and a spreadsheet entitled “Boards and Commissions” was created.
Following up on that report, OpenSecrets, the blog of the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors political spending, found an email from Kaplan to Amanda Moose, a special assistant to the President for presidential personnel, which appears to show coordination about the appointments between the DNC and the White House.
“For your review,” Kaplan wrote to Moose in an April 26 email which had the “Boards and Commissions — Final” spreadsheet attached.
As TheDC reported, most of those included on the list are major Democratic party donors. Most have donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. None contributed to Bernie Sanders.
“That is unethical, if not illegal,”Ken Boehm, the chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, told TheDC earlier this week of the apparent DNC quid pro quo.
One entry on one iteration of the DNC donor spreadsheet is telling as it suggests that one party donor expressed his desire to someone at the DNC about an appointment to the U. S. Postal Service’s board of governors.
Next to the name of Democratic donor David Shapira is the acronym “USPS.” The CEO of Giant Eagle, Inc., a supermarket chain, Shapira was nominated by Obama to the USPS board of governors last year. The pick was blocked by Congress, however.
TheDC emailed Kaplan asking whether Shapira specifically asked anyone at the DNC to be nominated again for the USPS position or if DNC officials assumed that he would want that position given his previous nomination.
The finance chief did not respond. DNC communications director Luis Miranda did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Other emails contained in the Wikileaks trove show that Kaplan and Moose likely discussed donor appointments over the phone.
Scott Comer, the DNC’s finance chief of staff, informed Kaplan on April 28 that he had missed a call from Moose. Kaplan asked for the number.
On May 3, Comer emailed Kaplan again saying that Moose wanted to set up a time “for a 20-minute conversation.”
In a comment to OpenSecrets, White House spokesman Eric Schultz denied that donors are given roles in the administration because of their political donations.
“Being a donor does not get you a role in this administration,” Schultz said, adding “nor does it preclude you from getting one.”
“We’ve said this for many years now and there’s nothing in the emails that have been released that contradicts that.”
The Obama administration has been accused of providing plush federal jobs — including appointments to federal boards and ambassadorships — for major Democratic and Obama donors.
As a presidential candidate in 2007, Obama specifically said that political patronage would be eradicated from his administration.
“The cynics and the lobbyists and the special interests have turned government into a game that only they can afford to play,” he said at the time. “They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills. They get the access when you get to write a letter. The time for that politics is over.”
As OpenSecrets notes, none of the donors picked by the DNC have been appointed to federal spots since Kaplan provided the spreadsheet to Moose.
Moose did not respond to TheDC’s request for comment.
Yup, there is more of course.
DWS Donor Convicted of Wire Fraud Relating to Horse Murder Not Allowed to Give to DNC
Hacked emails show George Lindemann Jr.’s past eliminated him as a DNC donor
FreeBeacon: A major donor to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) was forbidden from giving to the Democratic National Committee due to a past conviction on three counts of wire fraud following his electrocution of a horse to collect an insurance payout.
George Lindemann Jr., a Miami-based real estate developer and son of billionaire New York investor George Lindemann, was vetted earlier this year as a possible donor to the committee and to attend an event with President Barack Obama, according to an exchange contained within the latest batch of hacked DNC emails released by Wikileaks.
Clayton Cox, the DNC’s regional finance director in Florida, Georgia, and the Midwest, asked for a background check into Lindemann Jr. on May 9.
The same day, Chadwick Rivard, a senior research and compliance supervisor for the DNC, returned an extended report into Lindemann Jr.’s checkered past.
Lindemann Jr., a former equestrian who had Olympic aspirations, hired a man named Tommy Burns in 1990 to kill his horse, named “Charisma,” by electrocution so he could cash out on an insurance policy worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The insurance company ruled that the horse had died from natural causes. The plan had temporarily worked, as he was issued the $250,000 policy for the horse’s life.
However, federal investigators later uncovered a conspiracy between Burns and another person, named Barney Ward, to kill numerous horses for money. The practice allowed the horse’s owner to then collect the insurance policy, as Lindemann Jr. had done.
Burns provided information to the FBI on Lindemann Jr. It was discovered during this process that a man named James Druck had taught Burns how to electrocute horses to cash in on the insurance payout. Druck was the father of Rielle Hunter, the former mistress of John Edwards, who was born Lisa Druck.
During the trial, Lindemann’s defense argued that the $250,000 insurance payout did not matter to Lindemann Jr. given his family’s net worth. A U.S. attorney later described Lindemann Jr. as a “a very wealthy kid that has a toy that he doesn’t like or gets mad at and throws it on the floor and stomps on it.”
Lindemann Jr. was convicted on three counts of wire fraud in 1995 for his role in Charisma’s death. The judge presiding over Lindemann Jr.’s case ordered him to pay $500,000 in fines and $250,000 in restitution. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison, the maximum sentence.
Alan Reed, another DNC compliance officer, responded to the email chain saying, “I vote fail….again.”
Wasserman Schultz, who recently resigned as chair of the DNC following the release of the Wikileaks emails, accepted tens of thousands in donations from Lindemann Jr. to her leadership PAC and campaign committees in recent years.
Lindemann Jr. gave a $5,000 donation to Democrats Win Seats PAC, the leadership PAC of Wasserman Schultz, in February 2014. More than a year later, in April 2015, he contributed another $5,000 to the PAC.
Additionally, he gave $2,600 to Wasserman Schultz’s primary campaign in 2014 and added another $2,400 to her general election. He also combined togive $3,500 to the Democratic Executive Committee of Florida that year.
Lindemann Jr. donated $2,700 to Wasserman Schultz’s primary in 2015 and contributed $2,700 to her general, the maximum amounts allowed by law per election.
Lindemann Jr. has donated to both political parties throughout the years. He had failed previous background checks from the committee.
Wasserman Schultz’s office did not return a request for comment on the donations by press time.
Minister: Bavaria bomber in online chat before attack
BERLIN (AP) — A 27-year-old Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up at a bar in the southern German town of Ansbach was chatting online with a still-unidentified person immediately before the explosion, Bavaria’s interior minister said Wednesday.
Attacker Mohammed Daleel died and 15 people were wounded when his bomb exploded in a wine bar Sunday night after he was denied entry to a nearby open-air concert because he didn’t have a ticket.
“There was apparently an immediate contact with someone who had a significant influence on this attack,” state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on the sidelines of a party meeting in southern Bavaria, news agency dpa reported.
It wasn’t clear whether Daleel was in contact with the Islamic State group or where the other person in the chat was, Herrmann said. He said investigators checking the assailant’s cellphone came across the “intensive chat” and that “the chat appears to end immediately before the attack.”
“Because of witness testimony on what happened and also the course of the chat, there are indeed questions about whether he intended to set off the bomb at that moment,” Herrmann said.
On Tuesday night, the online magazine of the Islamic State group said the attacker spent months planning the attack, once even hiding his home-made bomb in his room in a state-supported asylum shelter moments before a police raid.
The weekly Al-Nabaa magazine’s report added that Daleel had fought in Iraq and Syria with a branch of al-Qaida and the IS group before arriving in Germany as an asylum seeker two years ago.
The Ansbach explosion was the last of four attacks in the country in the span of a week, two of which have been claimed by IS. Islamic extremism wasn’t the motive in the other two — including the deadliest of the series, Friday’s shooting in Munich in which nine people were killed.
The attacks have brought Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming refugees under renewed criticism.
Conservative lawmakers have called for an increased police presence, better surveillance and background checks of migrants — and new strategies to deport criminal asylum seekers more easily.
Al Nabaa’s Arabic-language report on the attacker said he initially fought against government forces with al-Qaida’s branch in Syria before pledging alliance to IS in 2013. He also helped the group with its propaganda efforts, setting up pro-IS accounts online.
In Germany, he started making the bomb, a process that took three months, al Nabaa wrote.
It added that German police once raided his asylum shelter in an unrelated case and searched Daleel’s room without noticing the bomb that he had hidden moments earlier.
IS earlier claimed the Ansbach attack, publishing a video it said was of Daleel pledging allegiance to the group and vowing that Germany’s people “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore.” It appears to be the same video as the one found by German investigators on the suicide bomber’s phone.
Daleel unsuccessfully sought asylum in Germany and was awaiting deportation to Bulgaria.
The recent attacks have heightened concerns about the government’s migration policy that saw more than 1 million people enter Germany last year.
A senior figure in the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, which has no seats in the national parliament but saw its popularity surge after last year’s migrant influx, suggested Wednesday that there should be “a halt to immigration for Muslims to Germany” until all asylum seekers now in the country have been registered, checked and had their applications processed.
“For security reasons, we can no longer afford to allow yet more Muslims to immigrate to Germany without control,” Alexander Gauland, a deputy party leader, said in a statement. “There are terrorists among the Muslims who immigrated illegally and their number is rising constantly.”
The Interior Ministry says Germany is not still seeing uncontrolled migration. Spokesman Johannes Dimroth said that “for some time” all new arrivals have been registered and checked against security databases.
As for whether people could be treated differently depending on their religion, “as I understand it that simply would be incompatible with our understanding of freedom of religion,” he said.
The bloodshed in Germany began July 18, when a 17-year-old from Afghanistan wielding an ax attacked passengers on a train near Wuerzburg, wounding five people before he was shot to death by police. The IS group claimed responsibility.
German train operator Deutsche Bahn said Wednesday it would invest heavily in increased security and hire hundreds of security staff to control trains and train stations across the country.
The city of Munich said it is re-evaluating its security concept for the annual Oktoberfest and is considering banning all backpacks from the popular beer fest.
Ex-Guantánamo detainee who vanished from Uruguay turns up in Venezuela
Abu Wa’el Dhiab, who had disappeared last month in Uruguay where he and six others were resettled in 2014, showed up at the Syrian consulate in Caracas
Guardian: A resettled former Guantánamo prisoner who disappeared last month in Uruguay, setting off alarm bells in neighboring countries and recriminations in Washington, has reappeared in Venezuela.
The Uruguayan foreign minister, Rodolfo Nin Novoa, told the Associated Press that Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab showed up at his country’s consulate in Caracas. Consulate officials refused to provide information or entry to AP journalists gathered outside.
Dhiab reportedly had last been seen in mid-July in Chuy, a small city on the Uruguay-Brazil border that is home to a small Arab community.
He is one of six former Guantánamo prisoners who were resettled in Uruguay after being released by US authorities in 2014, invited by then president José Mujica as a humanitarian gesture.
The men had been detained in 2002 for suspected ties to al-Qaida. They were held without charge like hundreds of others at Guantánamo Bay before the US government cleared them for release. There are no charges against Dhiab or order for his arrest, and Uruguayan officials had said that as a refugee he has the right to leave the South American country.
But Dhiab’s disappearance raised concerns, as well as questions about how closely countries that resettle former Guantánamo inmates should watch them and for how long, as the US prepares to release more prisoners.
US lawmakers trying to block Barack Obama from closing the detention center recently scolded his administration for losing track of Dhiab. The US envoy in Montevideo also expressed concerns about the lack of information on his whereabouts. Ambassador Kelly Keiderling said it’s up to Uruguay to say whether Dhiab can travel, though she added that she would prefer he stay in Uruguay. When questioned at a news conference, she said Dhiab “could be, yes, theoretically” a threat.
Colombia-based Avianca Airlines recently issued an internal alert saying Dhiab could be using a fake passport trying to enter Brazil, the site of the Summer Olympics. The airline said the alert was issued based on information provided by Brazil’s federal police, which had been looking for Dhiab.
The Uruguayan government has provided social services and financial support to Dhiab and the five other former detainees – three others from Syria, a Tunisian and a Palestinian. But the men have struggled to adjust and have complained about not getting enough help from Uruguayan officials.
Dhiab has been the most vocal about his unhappiness. Last year, he visited neighboring Argentina. In an orange jumpsuit like those Guantánamo prisoners have worn, he told news media in Buenos Aires that he planned to seek asylum for himself and the other detainees still held at the US naval base in eastern Cuba.
In an interview with the Uruguayan magazine Búsqueda, Dhiab said he was never a terrorist, but sympathizes with al-Qaida because of the torture that he endured in Guantánamo. He also has accused Uruguay of breaking its commitment to bring his family.
Jon Eisenberg, a US lawyer who represented Dhiab while he was detained at Guantánamo, said he has not been in contact with the former prisoner since a phone call in June but has heard from a contact in Uruguay that the report of his being in Venezuela is accurate.
Eisenberg said Dhiab was very concerned about his wife and three children, who fled the Syrian civil war for Turkey but then had to return to their homeland for financial reasons. They were in a Syrian village that was bombed by government forces in November 2015.
The lawyer said that when he last spoke with the former prisoner, Dhiab was hopeful that his family might be brought to Uruguay.
“That’s why I thought he wouldn’t leave Uruguay,” Eisenberg said.
Making a Killing: The 1.2 Billion Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East
An unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe is flooding the battlefields of the Middle East.
Lawrence Marzouk, Ivan Angelovski and Miranda PatrucicBIRNBelgrade, London, Sarajevo
BalkanInsight: As Belgrade slept on the night of November 28, 2015, the giant turbofan engines of a Belarusian Ruby Star Ilyushin II-76 cargo plane roared into life, its hull laden with arms destined for faraway conflicts.
Rising from the tarmac of Nikola Tesla airport, the hulking aircraft pierced the Serbian mist to head towards Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
It was one of at least 68 flights that in just 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to Middle Eastern states and Turkey which, in turn, funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has found. The flights form just a small part of €1.2 billion in arms deals between the countries since 2012, when parts of the Arab Spring turned into an armed conflict.
Belgrade Airport | BIRN
Meanwhile, over the past two years, as thousands of tonnes of weapons fly south, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled north from the conflicts that have killed more than 400,000 people. But while Balkan and European countries have shut down the refugee route, the billion-euro pipeline sending arms by plane and ship to the Middle East remains open – and very lucrative.
It is a trade that is almost certainly illegal, according to arms and human rights experts.
“The evidence points towards systematic diversion of weapons to armed groups accused of committing serious human rights violations. If this is the case, the transfers are illegal under the ATT (United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty) and other international law and should cease immediately,” said Patrick Wilcken, an arms-control researcher at Amnesty International who reviewed the evidence collected by reporters.
But with hundreds of millions of euros at stake and weapons factories working overtime, countries have a strong incentive to let the business flourish. Arms export licences, which are supposed to guarantee the final destination of the goods, have been granted despite ample evidence that weapons are being diverted to Syrian and other armed groups accused of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities.
Robert Stephen Ford, US ambassador to Syria between 2011 and 2014, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the trade is coordinated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Turkey and Gulf states through centres in Jordan and Turkey, although in practice weapon supplies often bypass this process.
BIRN and the OCCRP examined arms export data, UN reports, flight records, and weapons contracts during a year-long investigation that reveals how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns are pouring into the troubled region, originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.
Since the escalation of the Syrian conflict in 2012, these eight countries have approved the shipment of weapons and ammunition worth at least 1.2 billion euros to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.
The figure is likely much higher. Data on arms export licences for four out of eight countries were not available for 2015 and seven out of eight countries for 2016. The four recipient countries are key arms suppliers to Syria and Yemen with little or no history of buying from Central and Eastern Europe prior to 2012. And the pace of the transfers is not slowing, with some of the biggest deals approved in 2015.
Eastern and Central European weapons and ammunition, identified in more than 50 videos and photos posted on social media, are now in use by Western-backed Free Syrian Army units, but also in the hands of fighters of Islamist groups such as Ansar al-Sham, Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, in Syria, factions fighting for Syrian President Bashar-al Assad and Sunni forces in Yemen.
On April 7, 2016, twitter User @bm27_uragan, who monitors the spread of weapons in the Syrian conflict, posted a video apparently of Free Syrian Army rebel using Serbian made Coyote M02 heavy machine gun in Southern Aleppo in Syria. The Coyote M02 has been independently identified as a Coyote M02.
Markings on some of the weapons identifying the origin and date of production reveal significant quantities have come off production lines as recently as 2015.
Out of the 1.2 billion euros in weapons and ammunition approved for export, about 500 million euros have been delivered, according to UN trade information and national arms export reports.
The frequency and number of cargo flights – BIRN and the OCCRP identified at least 68 in just over one year – reveal a steady flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe airports to military bases in Middle East.
The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.
But arms and ammunitions are not only coming by air. Reporters also have identified at least three shipments made by the US military from Black Sea ports carrying an estimated 4,700 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Red Sea and Turkey since December 2015.
One Swedish member of the EU parliament calls the trade shameful.
“Maybe they –[Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia] – do not feel ashamed at all but I think they should,” said Bodil Valero, who also served as the rapporteur for the EU’s last arms report.“Countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East-North Africa region are not carrying out good risk assessments and, as a result, are in breach of EU and national law.”.
OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted.
A question of legality
The global arms trade is regulated by three layers of interconnected legislation — national, European Union, EU, and international – but there are no formal mechanisms to punish those who break the law.
Beyond the blanket ban on exports to embargoed countries, each licence request is dealt with individually.
In the case of Syria, there are currently no sanctions on supplying weapons to the opposition.
As a result, the lawfulness of the export approval hinges on whether countries have carried out due diligence on a range of issues, including the likelihood of the arms being diverted and the impact the export will have on peace and stability.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia are signatories of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, which entered into force in December 2014, and lists measures to prevent the illicit trade and diversion of arms.
Member states of the EU are also governed by the legally-binding 2008 Common Position on arms exports, requiring each country to take into account eight criteria when accessing arms exports licence applications, including whether the country respects international human rights, the preservation of “regional peace, security and stability” and the risk of diversion.
As part of their efforts to join the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro have already accepted the measures and have amended their national law. Serbia is in the process of doing so.
Weapons exports are initially assessed based on an end-user certificate, a key document issued by the government of the importing country which guarantees who will use the weapons and that the arms are not intended for re-export.
Authorities in Central and Eastern Europe told BIRN and the OCCRP that they also inserted a clause which requires the buyer to seek approval if they later want to export the goods.
Beyond these initial checks, countries are required to carry out a range of other risk assessments based on national and EU law and the ATT, although conversations with, and statements from, authorities revealed little evidence of that.
OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted. The three other countries did not respond to requests for comment.
The Czech Foreign Ministry was the only public body to directly address concerns about human rights abuses and diversions, saying it took into account both when weighing up an export licence and had blocked transfers on that basis.
The Central and Eastern European weapons supply line can be traced to the winter of 2012, when dozens of cargo planes, loaded with Saudi-purchased Yugoslav-era weapons and ammunition, began leaving Zagreb bound for Jordan. Soon after, the first footage of Croatian weapons in use emerged from the battleground of Syria.
According to a New York Times report from February 2013, a senior Croatian official offered the country’s stockpiles of old weapons for Syria during a visit to Washington in the summer of 2012. Zagreb was later put in touch with the Saudis, who bankrolled the purchases, while the CIA helped with logistics for an airlift that began late that year.
While Croatia’s government has consistently denied any role in shipping weapons to Syria, former US ambassador to Syria Ford confirmed to BIRN and the OCCRP the New York Times account from an anonymous source of how the deal was hatched. He said he was not at liberty to discuss it further.
This was just the beginning of an unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe into the Middle East, as the pipeline expanded to include stocks from seven other countries. Local arms dealers sourced arms and ammunition from their home countries and brokered the sale of ammunition from Ukraine and Belarus, and even attempted to secure Soviet-made anti-tank systems bought from the UK, as a Europe-wide arms bazaar ensued.
Prior to the Arab Spring in 2011, the arms trade between Eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, UAE, and Turkey – four key supporters of Syria’s fractured opposition – was negligible to non-existent, according to analysis of export data.
But that changed in 2012. Between that year and 2016, eight Eastern European countries approved at least 806 million euros worth of weapons and ammunition exports to Saudi Arabia, according to national and EU arms export reports as well as government sources.
Jordan secured export licences worth 155 million euros starting in 2012, while the UAE netted 135 million euros and Turkey 87 million euros, bringing the total to 1.2 billion euros.
Qatar, another key supplier of equipment to the Syrian opposition, does not show up in export licences from Central and Eastern Europe.
Jeremy Binnie, Middle East arms expert for Jane’s Defence Weekly, a publication widely regarded as the most trusted source of defence and security information, said the bulk of the weapon exports from Eastern Europe would likely be destined for Syria and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Libya.
“With a few exceptions, the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Turkey use Western infantry weapons and ammunition, rather than Soviet-designed counterparts,” said Binnie. “It consequently seems likely that large shipments of such materiel being acquired by – or sent to – those countries are destined for their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.”
BIRN and the OCCRP obtained confidential documents from Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and minutes from a series of inter-ministerial meetings in 2013. The documents show the ministry raised concerns that deliveries to Saudi Arabia would be diverted to Syria, pointing out that the Saudis do not use Central and Eastern European stock and have a history of supplying the Syrian opposition. The Ministry turned down the Saudi request only to reverse course more than one year later and approve new arms shipments citing national interest. Saudi security forces, while mostly armed by Western producers, are known to use limited amounts of Central and Eastern European equipment. This includes Czech-produced military trucks and some Romanian-made assault rifles. But even arms exports destined for use by Saudi forces are proving controversial, given their involvement in the conflict in Yemen.
The Netherlands became the first EU country to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia as a result of civilian deaths in Yemen’s civil war, and the European Parliament has called for an EU-wide arms embargo.
Supply Logistics: Cargo flights and airdrops
Weapons from Central and Eastern Europe are delivered to the Middle East by cargo flights and ships. By identifying the planes and ships delivering weapons, reporters were able to track the flow of arms in real time.
Detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, and air traffic control sources helped pinpoint 68 flights that carried weapons to Middle Eastern conflicts in the past 13 months. Belgrade, Sofia and Bratislava emerged as the main hubs for the airlift.
Most frequent were flights operated from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The flights were either confirmed as carrying weapons, were headed to military bases in Saudi Arabia or the UAE or were carried out by regular arms shippers.
The Middle East Airlift
At least 68 cargo flights from Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have carried thousands of tons of munitions in the past 13 months to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, three key suppliers of the Syrian rebels.
These were identified through detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, leaked arms contracts, end user certificates, and air traffic control sources.
Cargo flights from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and particularly military bases, were extremely uncommon before late 2012, when the upsurge in weapons and ammunition purchases began, according to EU flight data and interviews with plane-spotters.
The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.
Of the 68 flights identified, 50 were officially confirmed to have carried arms and ammunition:
Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate confirmed that 49 flights departing or passing through Serbia were carrying arms and ammunition from June 1, 2015 to July 4, 2016. The confirmation came following weeks of refusal to comment on grounds of confidentiality and after BIRN and the OCCRP presented its evidence, including photographs showing military boxes being loaded onto planes at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on four different occasions.
An official at the Bulgarian National Customs Agency confirmed one flight, operated by Belarussian cargo carrier Ruby Star Airways, was carrying arms from the remote Bulgarian Gorna Oryahovitsa Airport to Brno–Turany Airport, the Czech Republic, and on to Aqaba, Jordan.
An additional 18 flights were identified as very likely to have been carrying arms and ammunition based on one of three variables: the air freight company’s history of weapons supplies; connections to earlier arms flights; or a destination of a military airport:
Ten flights were made to Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia and Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, indicating the likely presence of weapons or ammunition. Additionally, 14 flights to Prince Sultan and Al Dhafra air bases are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.
Seven flights were operated from Slovakia and Bulgaria by Jordan International Air Cargo, part of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which were revealed to have carried weapons and ammunition from Croatia to Jordan in the winter of 2012. Bulgarian retired colonel and counter-terrorism expert Slavcho Velkov, who maintains extensive contacts with the military, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the Sofia-Amman flights “were transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, mostly for the Syrian conflict.” Additionally, one other flight operated by this airline is confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.
One flight was operated by a Belarussian cargo carrier TransAVIAexport Airlines, which has a long history of transporting weapons. In 2014, the airline was hired by Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic to transport Serbian and Belarussian weapons and ammunition to air bases in Libya controlled by various militant groups. The United Nations, UN, Sanctions Committee investigated the case and found potential breaches of UN sanctions, according to a 2015 UN report. Additionally, five flights operated by this airline are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.
Many of these flights made an additional stop in Central and Eastern Europe – meaning they were likely picking up more weapons and ammunition – before flying to their final destination.
EU flight statistics provide further evidence of the scale of the operation. They reveal that planes flying from Bulgaria and Slovakia have delivered 2,268 tons of cargo – equal to 44 flights with the most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – since the summer of 2014 to the same military bases in Saudi Arabia and UAE pinpointed by BIRN and OCCRP.
Distributing the weapons
Arms bought for Syria by the Saudis, Turks, Jordanians and the UAE are then routed through two secret command facilities – called Military Operation Centers (MOC) – in Jordan and Turkey, according to Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria.
These units – staffed by security and military officials from the Gulf, Turkey, Jordan and the US – coordinate the distribution of weapons to vetted Syrian opposition groups, according to information from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a think tank that has a unit monitoring the conflict.
“Each of the countries involved in helping the armed opposition retained final decision-making authority about which groups in Syria received assistance,” Ford said.
A cache of leaked cargo carrier documents provides further clues to how the Saudi military supplies Syrian rebels.
According to the documents obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, the Moldovan company AeroTransCargo made six flights in the summer of 2015 carrying at least 250 tonnes of ammunition between military bases in Saudi Arabia and Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, reportedly an arrival point for weapons and ammunition for Syrian rebels.
Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading organisation in tracking arms exports, said he suspects the flights are part of the logistical operation to supply ammunition to Syrian rebels.
From the MOCs, weapons are then transported by road to the Syrian border or airdropped by military planes.
A Free Syrian Army commander from Aleppo, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, told BIRN and OCCRP that weapons from Central and Eastern Europe were distributed from centrally controlled headquarters in Syria. “We don’t care about the county of origin, we just know it is from Eastern Europe,” he said.
The Saudis and Turks also provided weapons directly to Islamist groups not supported by the US and who have sometimes ended up fighting MOC-backed factions, Ford added.
The Saudis are also known to have airdropped arms and equipment, including what appeared to be Serbian-made assault rifles to its allies in Yemen.
Ford said that while he was not personally involved in negotiations with Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania over the supply of weapons to Syria, he believes that the CIA is likely to have played a role.
“For operations of this type it would be difficult for me to imagine that there wasn’t some coordination between the intelligence services, but it may have been confined strictly to intelligence channels,” he said.
The US may not have just played a role in the logistics behind delivering Gulf-sponsored weapons from Eastern Europe to the Syrian rebels. Through its Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), it has also bought and delivered vast quantities of military materiel from Eastern Europe for the Syrian opposition as part of a US$500 million train and equip programme.
Since December 2015, SOCOM has commissioned three cargo ships to transport 4,700 tons of arms and ammunition from ports of Constanta in Romania and Burgas in Bulgaria to the Middle East likely as part of the covert supply of weapons to Syria.
The shipments included heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons – as well as bullets, mortars, grenades, rockets and explosives, according to US procurement documents.
The origin of arms shipped by SOCOM is unknown and the material listed in transport documents is available from stockpiles across Central and Eastern Europe.
Not long after one of the deliveries, SOCOM supported Kurdish groups published an image on Twitter and Facebook showing a warehouse piled with US-brokered ammunition boxes in northern Syria SOCOM would not confirm or deny that the shipments were bound for Syria.
US procurement records also reveal that SOCOM secured from 2014 to 2016 at least 25 million euros (27 million dollars) worth of Bulgarian and 11 million euros (12 million dollars) in Serbian weapons and ammunition for covert operations and Syrian rebels..
A Booming Business
Arms control researcher Wilcken said Central and Eastern Europe had been well positioned to cash in on the huge surge in demand for weapons following the Arab Spring.
“Geographical proximity and lax export controls have put some Balkan states in pole position to profit from this trade, in some instances with covert US assistance,” he added. “Eastern Europe is rehabilitating Cold War arms industries which are expanding and becoming profitable again.”
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic boasted recently that his country could produce five times the amount of arms it currently makes and still not meet the demand.
“Unfortunately in some parts of the world they are at war more than ever and everything you produce, on any side of the world you can sell it,” he said.
Arms manufacturers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are running at full capacity with some adding extra shifts and others not taking new orders.
Saudi Arabia’s top officials – more used to negotiating multi-billion-dollar fighter-jet deals with Western defence giants – have been forced to deal with a handful of small-time arms brokers operating in Eastern Europe who have access to weapons such as AK-47s and rocket launchers
Middlemen such as Serbia’s CPR Impex and Slovakia’s Eldon have played a critical role in supplying weapons and ammunition to the Middle East
The inventory of each delivery is usually unknown due to the secrecy surrounding arms deals but two end-user certificates and one export licence, obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, reveal the extraordinary scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.
For example, the Saudi Ministry of Defence expressed its interest in buying from Serbian arms dealer CPR Impex a number of weapons including hundreds of aging T-55 and T-72 tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers. Weapons and ammunition listed were produced in the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.
An export licence issued to a little-known Slovakian company called Eldon in January 2015 granted the firm the right to transport thousands of Eastern European rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and almost a million bullets worth nearly 32 million euros to Saudi Arabia.
BIRN and OCCRP’s analysis of social media shows weapons that originated from the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria are now present on the battlefields of Syria and Yemen.
While experts believe the countries continue to shirk their responsibility, the weapons pipeline adds more and more fuel to a white hot conflict that leads to more and more misery.
“Proliferation of arms to the region has caused untold human suffering; huge numbers of people have been displaced and parties to the conflict have committed serious human rights violations including abductions, executions, enforced disappearances, torture and rape,” said Amnesty’s Wilcken.
Additional reporting by Atanas Tchobanov, Dusica Tomovic, Jelena Cosic, Jelena Svircic, Lindita Cela, RISE Moldova and Pavla Holcova.
This investigation is produced by BIRN as a part of Paper Trail to Better Governance project.
