On January 17th 2009 six people broke into EDO MBM/ITT in Brighton and caused £189 000 worth of damage to computers, servers, lathes and other equipment. The activists, calling themselves the ‘decommissioners’, took their action in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza which had claimed 1400 lives by the 17th. EDO MBM/ITT manufactures the arming unit for the Israeli F16 bombrack.
The six were arrested, along with three people alleged to have supported the action. All nine were charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage. At a month long trial at Hove Crown Court seven of the activists argued that they had a lawful excuse to damage EDO’s property as the company was complicit in war crimes. All seven were acquitted on July 2nd 2010 after the jury gave five unanimous not guilty verdicts and the judge directed that the final two should be acquitted. One activist had been found with no case to answer earlier in the trial due to lack of evidence.
One interesting aspect of the case for the Target Brimar campaign was the Judge’s view on End User Certificates. Those who have been following the Target Brimar campaign will know that Brimar has attempted to use End User Certificates to ‘prove’ that they have not been selling components for Israeli Apache helicopters in recent years, whilst saying that they are proud to supply the US and UK. This is what Judge Bathurst-Norman at Lewes Crown Court had to say:
“Firstly, the USA’s policy is to ensure that Israel is supplied with weapons. 95% of Israel’s weapons come from the USA, 4% from the EU and 1% from the United Kingdom.
As I have said already, the USA refuses to be bound by the terms of any End User Certificate.
What is an End User Certificate? If I want to export arms from this country I need to obtain a form from the DTI and fill it in, and then at the end of it there will be a box labelled “End User” and into that box there has to go a signature acceptable to the Government confirming that the person who signed there is indeed at the end of the chain and will not be selling items on.
Perhaps in comedy there is always a grain of truth. Some of you might, like me, have been a great admirer of the “Yes Minister” series. I don’t know if any of you ever watched a particular version of it, but if you did you may recall a scene in which Jim Hacker, the Minister, tried to get an understanding of the End User Certificate from Sir Humphrey, the Permanent Secretary, and he
was concerned that a particular detonating device had found itself in the hands of Italian terrorists.He ended up by asking if the system was really a charade, to which he received the answer from Sir Humphrey: “I think this conversation should end here, don’t you Minister!” (Laughter)
Well, as you saw in that defence exhibit, the Oxfam Report, because parts can be exported, perhaps without the need for an End User Certificate, and then be assembled elsewhere into a weapon, you may think the system is one which it is not too difficult to circumvent. In the first three months of 2008 the United Kingdom exported to Israel20,000,000 worth of weapons, that rising from 6,000,000 in the previous year.”
The verdict on the Smash EDO Decommissioners trial is likely to be this week.
Target Brimar people will be doing a solidarity picket (or hopefully a
celebration) at Barclays, on Mosley St in central Manchester, from 12.30pm
till 1.30pm on the day after the verdict is announced. We’ll send another
email to confirm this, so please look out for it.
Barclays are the market maker for ITT, EDO’s parent company as well as
being the largest banking investor in the arms trade, with over £7 billion
invested.
On 4 June, a jury at Belfast crown court found nine women not guilty of charges including breaking and entering into the Derry offices of arms manufacturer Raytheon during the 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza.
On 12 January 2009, Riosin Barton, Roisin Bryce, Elizabeth Doherty, Goretti Hagan, Diana King, Jackie McKenna, Sharron Meehan, Helen Reynolds and Julia Torrojo had intended to bring down Raytheon’s computer to highlight Raytheon’s supplying missile software to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Instead they chained themselves to doors inside the offices in an attempt to force a criminal investigation into Raytheon, apparently agreed to by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Raytheon reduced operations soon after and fully closed its facilities in Derry a year later.
The defence in court was that the IDF were guilty of war crimes in Gaza, aided and abetted by Raytheon, including by its faciklities in Derry, and that the action was intended to prevent or delay these crimes.
The defence was apparently accepted by the jury. One man supporting the action was fined for spray-painting; another given a discharge for impersonating a police office. Three others were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The first Raytheon Nine were men acquitted after a similar action in Derry in August 2009 (see PN 2499-2500).
Join us (on your way to the Manchester Parade?) to add your signature to letters to the MP, councillors, MEPs and press who cover the area that Brimar is based in. Do they know about the arms manufacturer on their doorstep? How do they feel about it?
On 17th January 2009, as the bombs rained down on Gaza, six people entered the EDO factory in Brighton, which makes parts for weapons that have been used against the people if Iraq, Afganistan and Palestine. They threw computers and filing cabinets out of the first floor window and took hammers to machinery used for weapons production. Their aim was to disable the war machine and to take action against those who profit from the aerial bombardment of Gaza. The offices were out of action for a month and hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage was reported.
The EDO Decommissioners always intended to go to trial – not as the accused but as the accusers making the case that their action was lawful because they were disarming an arms factory which is complicit in war crimes.
The trial date has been moved on a number of occasions, and it is now due to start on June 7th. In the run-up to this, Target Brimar are calling for solidarity with the EDO Decommissioners in Manchester. On Monday 17th May at 12.30pm we’ll be leafleting outside Barclays on Mosley Street in Manchester City Centre; please join us.
There has been a five year long campaign of direct action against EDO MBM/ITT aimed at persuading them to stop producing weapons components in Brighton. EDO’s components are used by the US and UK in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel in Palestine.
As ITT’s market maker, Barclays act as a ‘middle man’, purchasing shares from a seller and holding them until such a time as a buyer becomes available. This ensures the stability of ITT’s share price by allowing shareholders to sell off their assets at any time, even when a a buyer is not immediately available, and vice versa. Barclays also profits from this enterprise by selling ITT’s shares at a markup.
We’d also like to remind people in the North West about our own home-grownarms component manufacturer, Brimar in Chadderton, which sells components to the Israeli air force and to the British and US for use in Iraq and Afghanistan . Target Brimar holds a vigil at the factory at 4pm on the first Wednesday of every month and it would be great to see you there on 2nd June, 7th July and 4th August.
We will also be holding a letter-writing session at Nexus Cafe on Dale Street in Manchester on Sunday June 20th, 11am-1pm. We’ll have form letters to local MPs, MEPs, councillors and newspapers raising the issue of an arms factory on their patch, so please drop by to sign up and send some off. There will also be materials if you want to
On 5th April, Wikileaks released a classified US military video from 2007 that shows an Apache helicopter attacking and killing a group of Iraqi civilians. The incident rose to prominence because two of those who died were Reuters personnel – photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. The full video and much more information is available at http://www.collateralmurder.com
Brimar supply components for the helmet mounted displays used by US Apache helicopter crews. The pilot and gunner you can hear speaking in this video are wearing helmets quite likely containing parts made at Brimar’s Chadderton factory. Brimar also supply components for US Bradley tanks that were also involved in this incident.
When you watch this video, please remember that Brimar are “proud to stand by the fact that we supply stuff used by the British Army and the US.”
On Friday March 19th, we held an early morning picket at the Brimar factory to commemorate the start of the Iraq War. We greeted the workers as they arrived for work and tried to remind them of the deadly legacy of depleted uranium that US and UK troops, using equipment manufactured by them, have left in Iraq.
Below is an extract from Target Brimar’s dossier about the company’s links to weaponry used in the conflict, if anyone needs reminding about the blood this arms company has on its hands.
The managing director of Brimar William O’Brien was recently quoted in Crain’s business journal “This protest won’t change anything. I am proud to stand by the fact that we supply stuff used by the British Army and the US.”
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USA in Iraq
US Department of Defense documents cited above state that viewing equipment for the M1A1 tank developed and manufactured by Brimar was purchased by the US military and deployed with the Marine Corps Second Tank Battalion in Iraq. The dates given for this process are commissioning in 2003/4 and the date of the document is 2005, so it is unclear at exactly what point Brimar delivered its products to the Marine Corps.
However, it is a matter of public record that the Marine Corps 2nd Tank Battalion and its M1A1 tanks have played a significant role in Iraq and were present at the ’second battle of Fallujah’ in November 2004, when the US military launched an all-out assault on the town after clashes between Iraqi militants and US occupying forces and staff of their commercial contractors, Blackwater.
First-person accounts from Marine Corps personnel describe with considerable enthusiasm the Second Tank Battalion practicing firing their tank guns at Camp Fallujah, including the following passage:
‘”I pulled the trigger and a fireball came out,” Valasek explained. “We shot through thermal sights, so the sight went white and the dust cleared in time for me to see the round impact on target. It’s split-second total concentration. Even though I’m sitting right next to it, I don’t experience it moving.” That split-second zone, the flash of the gun and devastating impacts on target are what makes being a tanker worth it. All the un-sexy parts of the job, the maintenance, greasy fingernails, lifting heavy track, the sweat, the cold, the early mornings and late nights all seem to melt away.’
Widespread criticism has been levelled at the US attack on Fallujah. Over 200,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians and including women and children, fled Fallujah in November 2004, and a large proportion took months or years to return, if indeed they have done so at all. The human rights abuses and war crimes that the USA stands accused of for its actions in Fallujah have been documented elsewhere, see Milan Rai et al.
Depleted Uranium in Iraq
There is also clear evidence that Brimar components are used in systemswhich are involved in the delivery of depleted uranium (DU) munitions. These include Brimar’s supply of sighting equipment in M1A2 Abrams Tank, The Bradley IFV, the Challenger II tank and the A-10 Thunderbolts, all of which have been listed by defence industry experts as firing DU munitions.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the PGU-14/B API Armor Piercing Incendiary round was also used widely by US troops during Operation Desert Storm, and that the round “has a lightweight body which contains a sub-calibre high density penetrator of Depleted Uranium (DU). In addition to its penetrating capability DU is a natural pyrophoric material which enhances the incendiary effects.”
“It is thought that DU is the cause of a sharp increase in the incidence rates of some cancers, such as breast cancer and lymphoma, in areas of Iraq following 1991 and 2003. It has also been implicated in a rise in birth defects from areas adjacent to the main Gulf War battlefields… the Bystander Effect – whereby cells adjacent to those struck by alpha particles also exhibit signs of radiation damage, and Genomic Instability, where the descendants of radiation damaged cells show increased rates of mutations: the precursor to cancer growth. Ionizing radiation is a human carcinogen at every dose-level, not just at high doses; there is no threshold dose and any alpha particle can cause irreparable genetic damage…”
Brimar Managing Director alleges campaign is ‘based on false claim’
Posted by Admin | Tuesday 2nd March 2010
In an article published on February 15th, in local business paper Crains, Brimar’s Managing Director William O’Brien denied that Brimar’s components are in Boeing Apache helicopters supplied to Israel. Read more…
We are starting a monthly picket/vigil at 4pm on the first Wednesday of the month. The first one is on 3rd March. The next will be Wednesday April 7th.
On March 19th, the day before the Iraq war started, we will have an early morning picket to remember all those who died and continue to die in Iraq. Meet at Brimar at 7.30am, bring something to decorate the fence.
Check back for more info about upcoming events or sign up to our announcement email list by sending an email with “subscribe” in the subject line to announce-subscribe [at] targetbrimar.org.uk
NB- please remember to replace the [at] with an @
On 27th December 2009 it was one year since ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ the brutal 22 day bombing of Gaza by Israeli forces.
Target Brimar organised 22 days of protest to commemorate not only those killed in Gaza, but those killed by UK/US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world. Brimar is a Manchester based company whose targeting display systems are used by UK, US and Israeli forces. Target Brimar aims to stop the company manufacturing devices for military use.
Lots of different groups and individuals from around the north got involved in doing some type of demonstration on one of the 22 days. The 22 days of Waging Peace began on 27th December with a demonstration in Manchester city centre.
We asked groups to choose any date (see the calendar below) and organise their own event. These events included vigils, pickets, leafleting and petitioning in the local area.
We hope that the 22 Days of Waging Peace will ensure that those who lost their lives in Gaza and elsewhere last year, remain in our minds, and that we remember the complicity in those deaths of our own government, military and arms industry. As citizens, we must bear some responsiblity to take action to stop further bombings and deaths.
We also hope that the 22 days strengthened the anti-war, anti- militarist movement in the north and in Greater Manchester. During the 22 days we worked in our own different ways, but as part of the same campaign, respecting our diversity, building our unity.
Womens' Vigil at Brimar factory gates, 7th January 2010
