Citizen weapons inspectors visit Manchester factory

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign press release
Mon­day 5th Octo­ber 08:00
— for imme­di­ate release

Cit­i­zen Weapons Inspec­tors vis­it Man­ches­ter Fac­to­ry

At just before 8 o’clock this morn­ing, sev­er­al cit­i­zen weapons inspec­tors from the Tar­get Brimar cam­paign vis­it­ed the Chad­der­ton premis­es of mil­i­tary com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­er Brimar.[1] They were seek­ing infor­ma­tion on pos­si­ble con­nec­tions between Brimar’s prod­ucts and human rights abus­es com­mit­ted in Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq, and Afghanistan.[2]

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign­ers, in a research dossier released today,[3] have raised con­cerns that the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts may have been used in the com­mis­sion of human rights abus­es includ­ing attacks on civil­ians dur­ing the ‘Oper­a­tion Cast Lead’ inva­sion of Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces in Decem­ber 2008/January 2009. Brimar direc­tors admit­ted in 2006, dur­ing the war in Lebanon, that the com­pa­ny sup­plied com­po­nents used in Apache attack heli­copters sold to the Israeli mil­i­tary.

There is also evi­dence that prod­ucts devel­oped dur­ing a research col­lab­o­ra­tion between Brimar and the US Marine Corps were deployed with Marine tank bat­tal­ions in Iraq in 2004–5, includ­ing with forces direct­ly involved in the Sec­ond Bat­tle of Fal­lu­jah in Novem­ber 2004. And there is con­cern that Brimar prod­ucts may be incor­po­rat­ed into heli­copters cur­rent­ly being used to fire ther­mo­bar­ic mis­siles in Afghanistan.

The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign is call­ing on the com­pa­ny, which is owned by pri­vate investors and has a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the Bank of Scotland/Lloyds Bank­ing Group and there­fore with the British tax­pay­er, to return to its his­tor­i­cal­ly peace­ful man­u­fac­ture of spe­cial­ist screens and view­ing equip­ment, and on the British gov­ern­ment to reviews its arms export pol­i­cy and to cease its immoral and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tort­ed sub­si­dis­ing of the arms indus­try.

The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign is call­ing for a pub­lic demon­stra­tion on 17th Octo­ber 2009 call­ing on Brimar to rethink its mil­i­tary man­u­fac­ture oper­a­tions. Full details are avail­able on http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk

Notes for edi­tors

1. the weapons inspec­tors are, at the time of writ­ing, still at Brimar. They can be con­tact­ed direct­ly for inter­view on 07866 001207. Video footage and stills images will be made avail­able as soon as pos­si­ble via press@targetbrimar.org.uk and http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk. Gen­er­al ques­tions regard­ing the cam­paign and research should be made to 07506 551323 or to press@targetbrimar.org.uk.

2. the inspec­tors will be direct­ing ques­tions to Brimar regard­ing its aware­ness of doc­u­ment­ed human rights abus­es which are like­ly to have involved the use of its prod­ucts, and the com­pre­hen­sive­ness of its knowl­edge of the final des­ti­na­tions of its prod­ucts once sold.

3. copies of the dossier can be down­loaded at: http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk/downloads/target_brimar_dossier_october_2009‑1.pdf