napoleon
3rd Jul 2005, 17:56
The following is an interesting admission by Stocks of a great wrong doing by his South African company.
British-based airline fuelled Congo terror
Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas, Times 3/7/05
REBEL groups terrorising civilians in eastern Congo, where a devastating war marked by widespread atrocities has killed nearly 4m people, are doing so with weapons and ammunition flown to Africa by a British-based airline.
United Nations officials believe the flights breach the UN ban on the shipment of arms that fuel conflict in the region.
African International Airways (AIA), whose offices in Crawley, West Sussex, are two miles from Gatwick airport, made a total of six flights from Tirana, Albania, to the Rwandan capital of Kigali in late 2002 and early 2003, carrying more than 250 tons of arms in DC8 freighter aircraft.
Documents seen by The Sunday Times show that the ultimate recipients of the cargo — more than 5m rounds of machinegun ammunition, pistol ammunition and rocket- propelled grenades — were Rwandan-backed rebel groups based over the border in conflict-ridden eastern Congo. The rebels have killed, tortured and raped and have plundered Congo’s rich natural resources.
Last week Chris Patten, the former European commissioner for external relations, called the war in Congo “probably the most deadly conflict on earth since world war two”.
AIA, which has British directors, is a South African-registered company whose DC8s are on the civil aviation register of Swaziland.
The convoluted trail of the supplies is typical of the murky end of the international arms trade to Africa, experts say. The Albanian surplus ammunition was sold by a private company called Meico — the Military Export Import Company — that works on commission from Albania’s defence ministry.
Meico sold the ammunition to an Israeli company which then approached a firm in Tel Aviv to arrange transport to central Africa. This then contacted an air cargo broker which hired AIA to carry the ammunition. The cargo was consigned to yet another firm, registered in the British Virgin Islands. Paperwork for four of the six flights shows Kigali as the transit point for notional final destinations in Congo, Burundi, Brunei and the British Virgin Islands.
Last week Alan Stocks, managing director of AIA, said that he was not aware that the flights to Rwanda broke UN sanctions: “I suppose that we were naive, but we thought that the flights were normal government-to-government ones.”
At least one member of the crew expressed concern about the legitimacy of the flights, however. The DC8s were loaded and unloaded amid strict security in military areas of Tirana and Kigali airports. At Kigali they were met by an Israeli who restricted the crew’s movements on the ground.
The Foreign Office said: “We raised this issue with the governments of Albania and Rwanda with the intention of stopping any activity that may breach United Nations sanctions.
“We received assurances that Albania had sold these goods in the belief that it was a legitimate government-to- government deal.”
The Foreign Office also asked Customs and Excise to investigate the role of AIA. Yesterday a customs spokesman said there was “insufficient evidence to justify any further inquiries as no UK criminal offences have been committed”. During the investigation AIA continued to fly for the Ministry of Defence from RAF Lyneham to Basra, Iraq.
Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s research manager on the arms and security trade, said: “The British government says its laws are designed to protect human rights worldwide. That is why we need to have a full and prompt inquiry to uncover the truth about these flights.”
The flights from Albania are far from being the only recent arms shipments to the war-torn Great Lakes region of Africa bordering Congo and Rwanda.
In a report to be published on Tuesday, Amnesty details a further 150 tons of ammunition sent via Rwanda from Serbia; arms-for-diamonds agreements involving the Congolese government and companies in the Czech Republic, Israel and Ukraine; and evidence that Uganda supplied arms, ammunition and military support to armed opposition groups in eastern Congo last year, especially to groups controlling gold mining areas and trade routes.
The desire to control mining concessions by the use of proxy forces also appears to motivate the Rwandan government.
Days after an AIA flight from Tirana to Kigali, an Antonov 32B aircraft left Kigali for Bunia in Congo’s Ituri province. Departing on January 1, 2003 the aircraft carried “several tons of ammunition” and Thomas Lubanga, president of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), a local Ituri militia, and members of his party.
Shortly after the plane departed, the UPC established a “government” that purported to control Bunia and the rest of Ituri. Rafiki Saba Amiable, a Rwandan, was made chief of security services. He was also on the arms flight.
A confidential report to the UN security council, which The Sunday Times has seen, claimed that the UPC army commander reported directly to the Rwandan army’s chief of staff.
In October 2002, a UN report said that Congo’s “contribution to Rwanda’s military expenses would therefore have been in the order of $320m. The activities funded by [these] resources strongly shape Rwanda’s foreign policy . . . These transactions are, however, hidden from the scrutiny of international organisations”.
British-based airline fuelled Congo terror
Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas, Times 3/7/05
REBEL groups terrorising civilians in eastern Congo, where a devastating war marked by widespread atrocities has killed nearly 4m people, are doing so with weapons and ammunition flown to Africa by a British-based airline.
United Nations officials believe the flights breach the UN ban on the shipment of arms that fuel conflict in the region.
African International Airways (AIA), whose offices in Crawley, West Sussex, are two miles from Gatwick airport, made a total of six flights from Tirana, Albania, to the Rwandan capital of Kigali in late 2002 and early 2003, carrying more than 250 tons of arms in DC8 freighter aircraft.
Documents seen by The Sunday Times show that the ultimate recipients of the cargo — more than 5m rounds of machinegun ammunition, pistol ammunition and rocket- propelled grenades — were Rwandan-backed rebel groups based over the border in conflict-ridden eastern Congo. The rebels have killed, tortured and raped and have plundered Congo’s rich natural resources.
Last week Chris Patten, the former European commissioner for external relations, called the war in Congo “probably the most deadly conflict on earth since world war two”.
AIA, which has British directors, is a South African-registered company whose DC8s are on the civil aviation register of Swaziland.
The convoluted trail of the supplies is typical of the murky end of the international arms trade to Africa, experts say. The Albanian surplus ammunition was sold by a private company called Meico — the Military Export Import Company — that works on commission from Albania’s defence ministry.
Meico sold the ammunition to an Israeli company which then approached a firm in Tel Aviv to arrange transport to central Africa. This then contacted an air cargo broker which hired AIA to carry the ammunition. The cargo was consigned to yet another firm, registered in the British Virgin Islands. Paperwork for four of the six flights shows Kigali as the transit point for notional final destinations in Congo, Burundi, Brunei and the British Virgin Islands.
Last week Alan Stocks, managing director of AIA, said that he was not aware that the flights to Rwanda broke UN sanctions: “I suppose that we were naive, but we thought that the flights were normal government-to-government ones.”
At least one member of the crew expressed concern about the legitimacy of the flights, however. The DC8s were loaded and unloaded amid strict security in military areas of Tirana and Kigali airports. At Kigali they were met by an Israeli who restricted the crew’s movements on the ground.
The Foreign Office said: “We raised this issue with the governments of Albania and Rwanda with the intention of stopping any activity that may breach United Nations sanctions.
“We received assurances that Albania had sold these goods in the belief that it was a legitimate government-to- government deal.”
The Foreign Office also asked Customs and Excise to investigate the role of AIA. Yesterday a customs spokesman said there was “insufficient evidence to justify any further inquiries as no UK criminal offences have been committed”. During the investigation AIA continued to fly for the Ministry of Defence from RAF Lyneham to Basra, Iraq.
Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s research manager on the arms and security trade, said: “The British government says its laws are designed to protect human rights worldwide. That is why we need to have a full and prompt inquiry to uncover the truth about these flights.”
The flights from Albania are far from being the only recent arms shipments to the war-torn Great Lakes region of Africa bordering Congo and Rwanda.
In a report to be published on Tuesday, Amnesty details a further 150 tons of ammunition sent via Rwanda from Serbia; arms-for-diamonds agreements involving the Congolese government and companies in the Czech Republic, Israel and Ukraine; and evidence that Uganda supplied arms, ammunition and military support to armed opposition groups in eastern Congo last year, especially to groups controlling gold mining areas and trade routes.
The desire to control mining concessions by the use of proxy forces also appears to motivate the Rwandan government.
Days after an AIA flight from Tirana to Kigali, an Antonov 32B aircraft left Kigali for Bunia in Congo’s Ituri province. Departing on January 1, 2003 the aircraft carried “several tons of ammunition” and Thomas Lubanga, president of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), a local Ituri militia, and members of his party.
Shortly after the plane departed, the UPC established a “government” that purported to control Bunia and the rest of Ituri. Rafiki Saba Amiable, a Rwandan, was made chief of security services. He was also on the arms flight.
A confidential report to the UN security council, which The Sunday Times has seen, claimed that the UPC army commander reported directly to the Rwandan army’s chief of staff.
In October 2002, a UN report said that Congo’s “contribution to Rwanda’s military expenses would therefore have been in the order of $320m. The activities funded by [these] resources strongly shape Rwanda’s foreign policy . . . These transactions are, however, hidden from the scrutiny of international organisations”.