Deutsche Welle (DW) reports:
The US military has been using its massive air base in western
Germany to arm rebel groups in Syria without Berlin's permission,
according to a report from German newspaper
Süddeutsche Zeitung published on Wednesday.
The
US military may have violated German law with the alleged weapons
transfers as the German government has not approved any weapons
transports of this type since the conflict in Syria began in 2011.
The report was published after months of collaborative research among the
Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
The
data was gathered from internal emails from the US military, interviews
with whistleblowers, official reports and databanks from the US as well
as the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms.
Weapons flown from Ramstein to Turkey
According to the
Süddeutsche
report, private service providers with the US military have been
purchasing weapons and ammunition in eastern Europe since 2013.
The
Russian-designed weapons, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were
sent from factories in Serbia, Bosnia, Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic
and found their way to US command centers in Turkey and Jordan.
The
weapons then made their way into the region either through ports in
Romania and Bulgaria — or through the US military air base in Germany,
the report said.
The purchases were part of a US Department of
Defense program to arm Syrian rebels in northern Syria to fight against
the so-called "Islamic State" in Raqqa.
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