Several Eastern and Central European countries, including Slovakia, have approved the discreet sale of more than €1bn of weapons in the past four years to Middle Eastern countries, reported TASR, referring to an article in the British daily Guardian on Wednesday. Research conducted by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) developed a suspicion that guns and ammunition were supplied to the Arabian Peninsula and other countries bordering Syria. Subsequently the guns and ammunition were delivered to Syria via secret ways, thus, arming all the groups (ISIS, Syrian Armed forces with their allies and Free Syrian Army) fighting in the five-year civil war in the country.
The Guardian also pointed at EU flight statistics showing that since the summer of 2014 "planes from Bulgaria and Slovakia have delivered thousands of tonnes of unidentified cargo," which, as the British daily cites the reports by BIRN and OCCRP, ended up at the same military bases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As of Thursday, no Slovak representatives have commented on these findings.
