German company 3W Modellmotoren, which produces the motors for small airplanes, stated that dealers resold some of its technologies to Belarus for the use in unmanned aircraft.
As Managing Director Pert Wintrich stated, it is quite possible that Belarus received the motors from one of the dealers.
“You never know what they (dealers) do,” he said during the interview with EUobserver.
Pert Wintrich explained that the company does not sell motors to Belarus directly, but he marked that his company has no control over trade agents. According to him, the company has dealers in 43 countries around the world, three of which are in Russia.
“You can use any of our motors for unmanned aircraft,” he said. The best of 3W motors product line comes at 8.4 thousand euro.
The State Military Industrial Committee of Belarus has run a number of tests of unmanned aircraft with the use of 3W Modellmotoren equipment. Non-governmental organization “Belarus Tribunal” is worried that the state authorities might install the video surveillance equipment on to unmanned aircraft in order to control the demonstrations, to trace dissidents, as well as to use unmanned aircraft to disperse the crowds with the use of tear gas.
Belarus Tribunal also states that Austrian, German and Swiss small arms were sold to Belarus and were forwarded to the special unit of interior troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
This unit is intended for dispersing unauthorized demonstrations, and it played important part in crackdown of the demonstration on December of 2010, which motivated the EU to impose an embargo on supplies of, first of all, arms in Belarus.
Non-governmental organization “Belarus Tribunal” reports that the arms were sold on September and October last year after the EU had imposed the embargo.
An additional embargo, which was imposed by the EU on June 2011, included embargo on sale and distribution of any produce such as small arms, explosives, grenades, ammunition, technologies and equipment that could be used for the interior repressions.
“According to the information received by our organization, the small arms were delivered to the unit for rearmament despite the continuous embargo of the EU. For example, the small arms, used by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, include arms produced by Glock (Austria) and Sig Sauer (Switzerland-German),” reads the statement of Belarus Tribunal.
Glock (Austria) and Sig Sauer (Switzerland-German), which produce and sell small arms for police and military forces around the world, did not comment on the issue.
In his turn, Officer of Belarusian Special Unit Igor Makar, which flew the country, informed that he does not know the facts about Belarusian enforcement units using the arms produced in the EU. According to him, the arms could have been delivered to Belarus from the EU as well as sold through the third countries.
He said that Belarusian governmental media informed about purchase of Swiss and German arms six months ago, and TV channel ONT showed Sig Sauer P226 pistol.
The EU noted that they are not aware of the fact of the evident violation of the sanctions against Belarus by any of the EU companies.
“People on the ban list make a lot of efforts to be excluded from the list. But I don’t know about the recent cases of violation of the sanctions,” said Maya Kochiyanchich spokesperson of the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.
Source: Telegraf