Militarizing the Middle East: Arms Shipments Continue Despite Abuses
►http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15691
A mysterious ship laden with weapons is expected to dock in Port Said, Egypt, this week. The MV Schippersgracht left Southport in North Carolina, the Pentagon’s largest ammunition port, on March 3, 2012. The ship is on contract to the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command, which refuses to explain what weapons are on board or what the ultimate destination of the weapons are, claiming security concerns.
Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s head of arms control, raised the alarm: “This ship of shame should not be allowed to unload its dangerous cargo in Egypt, and there is a substantial risk that this is what it plans to do,” he said in an Amnesty press release.
There is good reason to worry – the U.S. is one of the major sources of weapons that both the current and the previous regimes in Cairo have used against their citizens.
For example, a shipment for the Egyptian Ministry of Interior arrived from the US on November 26, 2011, carrying at least seven tons of “ammunition smoke” – which includes chemical irritants and riot control agents such as tear gas – from Combined Systems, Inc. of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. A U.S. State department spokesperson later confirmed that they had approved licenses for the export of such devices to Egypt.