Global Research
Bill Van Auken
Bill Van Auken
 Documents made public by Amnesty International show that Washington repeatedly shipped additional arms and munitions to the regime in Egypt even as it hypocritically deplored “excessive force” by police and troops and called for an end to “violence.” The human rights group condemned the US State Department for issuing successive arms export licenses for the purpose of shipping crowd control munitions to Egypt. These shipments were approved in the middle of violent repression of demonstrators fighting for the ouster of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak and, subsequently, during protests calling for an end to rule by his successors in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). The latest of these shipments arrived at the port of Adabiya, near Suez, on November 26, just a day after millions of Egyptian workers and youth took to the streets demanding an end to the SCAF military junta. Over the course of the previous week, security forces had carried out a bloody crackdown, killing at least 40 people and wounding thousands. In a number of cases demonstrators were killed with live ammunition, while in others, so-called “less-lethal” weapons were used in such a way, such as firing tear gas canisters at head level and close range, as to take lives. The November 26 shipment, according to Amnesty, included at least seven tons of “ammunition smoke,” which includes tear gas and other riot control munitions. The repressive materials came from Combined Systems, Inc. (CSI) in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, which, in addition to CS tear gas grenades, markets numerous other “less-lethal” munitions ranging from rubber baton rounds to flash-bang grenades and pepper spray. The human rights group reported that the shipment was organized by the defense logistics company Nico Shipping, with the munitions loaded onto a Danish ship, the Marianne Danica, at the US Military Ocean Terminal in Sunny Point, North Carolina on October 13. |
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