Belgian authorities have refused to name the arms firms that exported the goods amid the opening of a criminal investigation into the matter, John McEvoy reports.
Belgium’s Liège Airport in Wallonia. (Vberger at French Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
By John McEvoy
Declassified UK
Two shipments of military components bound for Israel from the U.K. have been seized in Belgium, it can be revealed.
This follows an alert issued to authorities in Brussels by Declassified, Belgian NGO Vredesactie, Irish news outlet The Ditch and the Palestinian Youth Movement.
Belgium has strict laws on the transshipment of military items to Israel through its ports and airports, including a ban on overflights carrying weaponry through its airspace.
Customs officials were notified last month of a suspicious military shipment travelling from Britain to Israel through Liege airport.
The cargo was subsequently searched by a specialised engineer who found “the presence of fire control systems and spare parts for military aircraft.”
Walloon Minister-President Adrien Dolimont said:
“We have to see if the legislation has been respected. Here, in this case, it’s clear that it hasn’t.”
Another Belgian government spokesperson told Declassified:
“No transit licence request was issued; if it had been, it would have been refused.”
The Shipment
Adrien Dolimont in 2024. (Flobrdd /Wikimedia Commons/ CC0)
The two consignments arrived in Liege on March 24 and were scheduled for onward air transport to Tel Aviv on a Challenge Airlines service two days later, according to shipping documents seen by Declassified.
The U.K. arms export codes associated with the goods were ML10 and ML5, which relate to military aircraft and fire control components.
Hans Lammerant, a spokesperson for Vredesactie, [a peace advocacy group] said: “We also have information on 17 transits in the past. So it was clearly a regular transit from Bierset [Liege] to Israel.”
The Belgian authorities have refused to name the arms firms who exported the goods amid the opening of a criminal investigation into the matter.
However, a spokesperson for the Walloon government confirmed that the initial complaint focussed on Moog, a U.S. aerospace firm with factories across Britain, and did not refute that some of the seized items may have belonged to that company.
Customs brokerage documents seen by Declassified indicate that some of the earlier shipments from Britain to Israel via Liege airport were sent by Moog.
A post code associated with the company’s factory in Wolverhampton, for instance, sent items to Israel through Belgium last December with goods description “servo actuator.”
Moog manufactures actuators for the M-346, an aircraft which is used to train Israeli pilots to fly advanced fighter aircraft including the F-35 and F-16.
Actuators are machines that control the movement of other components, and can be used to help steer an aircraft.
It is unclear whether the arms producers would have been aware of the cargo carriers’ shipping routes.
A Walloon government spokesperson told Declassified:
“In our view, the goods do indeed require a transit licence, which must be applied for either by UPS or by Challenge Airlines…
“We have already contacted our lawyers. We wish to… take all necessary steps to ensure that the law is upheld”.
Moog and UPS were approached for comment.
Legal Concerns
After finding the shipment, Walloon Minister-President Dolimont said: “It’s not always easy to identify whether or not it’s military equipment”.
For instance, cargo carriers appear to be consolidating military items with civilian goods into shared airway bills, meaning arms components can be shipped alongside games consoles and medical items, potentially making enforcement controls more challenging.
In addition to this, arms shipments seem to have been given customs codes commonly associated with civilian goods (such as “valves and similar components”) instead of ones more closely linked to military goods (like “aircraft parts”).
Declassified asked Britain’s trade department whether it has made an assessment of U.K.-origin military items being illegally transshipped via Belgium, and if it has discussed this with the Belgian authorities.
A spokesperson said:
“We have suspended all license for equipment for Israel that might be used in military operations in Gaza, with the exception of the special measures relating to the global F-35 programme.
“Exports of controlled equipment are subject to strict licensing requirements. It would be a criminal offence for an exporter not to have the required licences in place before exporting such items.”
John McEvoy is chief reporter for Declassified UK. John is an historian and filmmaker whose work focuses on British foreign policy and Latin America. His PhD was on Britain’s Secret Wars in Colombia between 1948 and 2009, and he is currently working on a documentary about Britain’s role in the rise of Augusto Pinochet.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
