The prosecutor-general of the Ukraine says that arms dealers smuggled 18 Kh-55 cruise missiles to China and Iran. Designed for, though not smuggled with, a 200kt nuclear warhead, each missile has a range of 3,000 km. That assumes, of course, that Soviet-era cruise missiles that languished in the Ukraine for almost a decade still work well.
Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat is being charged with genocide in the Netherlands for selling chemical precursors to Iraq, which were used to make chemical weapons that were subsequently deployed against the Iranians and (incurring the charge here) the Kurdish town of Halabja. In his own defense, he says:
"The images of the gas attack on the Kurdish city Halabja were a shock. But I did not give the order to do that..."
"How many products, such as bullets, do we make in the Netherlands?
This does bring up an interesting point. Who makes all the bullets used in Sudan, or in the conflict in the Congo? Are they manufactured locally, or do they come from an outside supplier? After all, it's horrible to kill people with poison gas, but it's also horrible to massacre people with gunfire or machetes.
This may be a case, however, where it's at least possible to find a single supplier to prosecute, and so people do.
Ported comments:
suppliers
(Anonymous)
2005-03-18 08:48 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreen Select
at least in the case of sudan, i believe the G3 rifles come from Iran. I can't find the link now, but there was a story up about it. i'd like to take a look at a current copy of jane's infantry weapons to make sure. i know that iran has manufactured the g3 under license from HK for quite some time. i wouldn't be surprised if the 7.62x51 they are using out there is also iranian.
i wish some reporter would grab some spent 7.62 brass and take pics of the headstamps. that's probably too much to ask.