UK Missed Chance to Stop Suspect Bosnian Bullet Deal

The deal was brought to the UK’s attention because two British-based brokers had requested – and were eventually refused – licences to mediate the Bosnia-Saudi deal.

Though Bosnian officials said it had no record of a broker being involved in the export, a BIRN investigation has established the shipment that left Bosnia in two parts in November 2015 and January 2016 with the approval of Sarajevo matched the deal for which the UK refused brokering licences in terms of timing, quantity, origin, destination and type of ammunition.

The UK refusal came in March 2016 after around 14 months of deliberation, when it was already too late to halt the shipment. Such applications are usually decided within 20 working days.

The refusal cited the “unacceptable risk” the bullets would be diverted, adding that the Saudi government, the specified ‘end user’, was not in fact “the intended recipient”, according to information obtained by BIRN under a Freedom of Information request submitted to the Department for International Trade.

Experts in the international arms trade say the UK likely suspected the bullets would end up in the hands of Saudi proxies in Syria or Yemen; even more worrying are the concerns raised by some watchdogs, including Amnesty International, about the leaky nature of US and Saudi arms pipelines into Syria, meaning some military hardware has found its way to extremists including ISIS.

BIRN has reported extensively on the billion-euro arms trade that has developed between Balkan countries and Saudi Arabia, which systematically diverts the weapons to allied militias in Syria and Yemen.

Despite these concerns, and calls by the European Parliament to place an arms embargo on the Gulf kingdom, licences to Saudi Arabia are rarely rejected, making the UK’s decision all the more significant.

No obligation to share concerns

In May 2015, photos emerged of what appears to be Serbian-made mortar shells which had been airdropped by the Saudi-led coalition to is proxies in Yemen (via the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism)

Balkan weapons and ammunition have been used in a number of Islamist attacks in Europe in recent years and Western governments count on countries such as  Bosnia to crack down on arms trafficking, yet the UK made no apparent effort to warn Sarajevo of its concerns about this particular shipment.

A high-ranking Bosnian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told BIRN that Sarajevo had received no communication from the UK on the issue.

For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight