BAE had attempted to reinvent itself as an ethical arms company before, and would continue to do so. In 2006, Deborah Allen, director of corporate responsibility, told the BBC that BAE was doing ‘Everything from looking at making a fighter jet more fuel-efficient and looking at the materials that munitions are made of and what their impact on the environment would be.’ The company had plans to manufacture ‘green’ lead-free bullets so that once in the environment they ‘do not cause any additional harm’. Additional, that is, to the harm they’ve caused to the injured or dead target.
BAE also spoke about making a quieter bomb so that the users’ exposure to fumes would be reduced. And the company was reported to be making landmines which would turn into manure over time. As Allen put it, they would ‘regenerate the environment that they had initially destroyed’.
She continued: ‘It is very ironic and very contradictory, but I do think, surely, if all the weapons were made in this manner it would be a good thing.’ This green initiative led only to much mirth at the absurd notion of the ethical arms company making weapons and ammunition that would be more caring. The plan to make green bullets was scrapped two years later after BAE discovered that tipping bullets with tungsten instead of lead resulted in higher production costs, making the venture unprofitable.
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[There is] a distinct lack of political will to prosecute arms dealers on the part of many countries. The early history of Merex illustrates how dealers are often protected from prosecution by their links to state intelligence agencies or other quasi-state actors. In extreme cases dealers are integral components of organized crime networks that include political actors, while others are or have been useful to powerful politicians or officials, who explicitly or tacitly condone their actions. Their apprehension and prosecution could result in severe embarrassment and politico-legal difficulties for their abettors. With friends in high places some arms dealers have been able to evade arrest and prosecution throughout their illicit careers and beyond.
Viktor Bout’s evasion of justice for many years is an exemplar of how these issues have combined to bedevil the prosecution of arms dealers.
In February 2002, Belgian authorities issued an Interpol ‘red notice’* that they were seeking the arrest of Bout on charges of money laundering and arms dealing. In theory, if he was in a member state, local police authorities were obliged to arrest him and hand him over to Belgium.
...A plan was hatched to arrest him when he landed in Athens and bring him to justice in Belgium. Soon after Bout’s flight took off, British field agents sent an encrypted message to London informing them that ‘the asset’ was in the air. Minutes later the plane changed direction, abandoning its flight plan. It disappeared into mountainous territory out of reach of local radars. The plane re-emerged ninety minutes later and landed in Athens. When police boarded the aircraft it was empty except for the pilots. Twenty-four hours later Bout was spotted 3,000 miles away in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bout’s crew had been informed of the plan to arrest him in Athens and had arranged to drop him off safely elsewhere. For a European investigator all signs pointed towards US complicity: ‘There were only two intelligence services that could have decrypted the British transmission in so short a time,’ he explained. ‘The Russians and the Americans. And we know for sure it was not the Russians.’
Shortly after Bout’s narrow escape he moved back into the safety of his ‘home territories’ in Russia. Russian officials were reluctant to see Bout prosecuted as he had close contacts within the Russian establishment through whom he had been able to source surplus matériel for years. In 2002, in response to a request to reveal his whereabouts, Russian authorities declared that Bout was definitely not in Russia.
As they were issuing this definitive denial Bout was giving a two-hour interview in the Moscow studios of one of the country’s largest radio stations. Shortly afterwards Russian authorities released a second clarifying statement. It was a thinly veiled message, in classic Orwellian doublespeak, that Bout was now untouchable. With this Russian protection – known locally as krisha – Bout was able to resume operations, albeit with a higher degree of caution. As a consequence, as recently as 2006, Bout was sending weapons to Islamist militants in Somalia and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
More (#2) from The Shadow World:
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