Two shipments of military components bound for Israel from the UK 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 transhipment 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”. RELATED Arms for Israel secretly shipped through UK airspace The UK 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 , 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 US 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 postcode 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. RELATED UK arms trade: A trifecta of everything that’s wrong 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 UK-origin military items being illegally transhipped via Belgium, and if it has discussed this with the Belgian authorities.
A spokesperson said: “We have suspended all licences 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”.
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