Swiss War Materiel and Arms Exports

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Swiss rifles and ammunition for the KLA

Goods category: War materiel

Memorial and cemetery for victims of the Kosovo War in Gjakova.

CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1998, a Swiss woman married to a Kosovar procured weapons and ammunition worth around one million Swiss francs. These included 195 rifles, of which 115 were SSG 3000 sniper rifles, around 20 pistols and more than six tonnes of ammunition. The goods reached Durrës in shipping containers and were seized by Albanian customs in late October 1998. Their subsequent whereabouts remained unknown. In 2000, the instigator received a final conviction and a suspended prison sentence. The Federal Council documented the incident in 2011 in its response on arms procurement for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

Effect of the proposed War Materiel Act revision

Under the new Article 22b, the Federal Council could depart from all the licensing criteria in Article 22a under vaguely defined ‘exceptional circumstances’. The public would not have to be informed. The Federal Council could add Kosovo to Annex 2 by amending the War Materiel Ordinance. This would remove the exclusion criterion based on participation in an armed conflict and make approval the rule. The Federal Council could refuse a licence only in exceptional cases. Article 18 paragraph 1 would abolish non-re-export declarations in the vast majority of cases. Weapons for Kosovo could thus easily be supplied through a subsidiary or intermediary in a third country. The United States could serve as a third country, having, according to SIPRI, supplied substantial quantities of war materiel to Kosovo in recent years (21 million TIV).

Countries

Conflicts

Time period

1998–2000; Federal Council response in 2011

Sources