Military - new material (54)
01 September 2005
The Emerging EU Military-Industrial Complex: arms lobbying in Brussels, Frank Slijper. Transnational Institute & Dutch Campaign Against the Arms Trade TNI Briefing no. 1, 2005, pp. 36. This TNI Briefing "highlights the influential but little-exposed role that the arms industry and its lobby play in Brussels today." It shows how this "lobbying power threatens the 1998 EU Code of Conduct on arms exports that should forbid arms sales to human rights abusers or conflict zones" and calls for a "much more transparent European decision-making process - especially on military matters - including civil society, instead of the current situation of overwhelming corporate power."
Revealed BAE's secret £1m to Pinochet, David Leigh & Rob Evans. Guardian 15.9.05. This article discloses US banking records which reveal that the UK's biggest arms firm, BAE Systems, secretly paid "more than £1m to General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator." The most recent of these payments was made in 2004. Questioned about the payments to a war criminal, BAE issued a statement saying: "We at BAE Systems have clear and rigorous policies which govern the conduct of our relationships with third parties. We require all our employees to adhere to these policies and comply with the law." The Chilean courts are currently pursuing Pinochet regarding allegations of tax evasion.
Leadership Failure: Firsthand accounts of torture of Iraqi detainees by the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Human Rights Watch Vol. 17 no. 3 (September) 2005, pp28. This report recounts eye-witness reports of torture and other mistreatment used by soldiers of the US 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq "as a means of intelligence gathering and for stress relief." The report says: "According to their accounts the torture and other mistreatment of Iraqis in detention was systematic and was known at varying levels of command. Military intelligence personnel, they said, directed and encouraged army personnel to subject prisoners to forced, repetitive exercise, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness, sleep deprivation for days on end, and exposure to extremes of heat and cold as part of the interrogation process. At least one interrogator beat detainees in front of other soldiers. Soldiers also incorporated daily beatings of detainees in preparation for interrogations. Civilians, believed to be from the Central Intelligence Agency conducted interrogations out of sight, but not earshot, of soldiers, who heard what they believed were abusive interrogations."
European Commission Press Release MEMO/05/368 Linking the internal and external aspect of the EU security. European Commission, Brussels, 12 October 2005.
Towards a European Defence Equipment Market. Burkard Schmitt, Eurofuture. ISS Analysis, Summer 2005
EU-US burdensharing: who does what? Gustav Lindstrom. ISS Chaillot Paper no 82, September 2005.