Western components in the hands of terrorists
Parts made by a German company are found in a Hezbollah drone.
A few days ago, Nir Eylon, who lives in northern Israel, was awoken from his sleep by air-raid sirens. He saw a Hezbollah drone fly over his house, which was then shot down by the Israeli army. The man was very surprised when he examined the wreckage.
„I was sure that when I got closer to the wreck, I would see Arabic and Persian inscriptions. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that it said Made in Germany. How can German parts end up in the hands of terrorists?”
Eylon told N12News television. He added that after the Holocaust, it was difficult to bear the thought of German parts appearing in weapons designed to kill as many Jews as possible. It has already been reported in the German newspaper Die Welt that there is a certain tradition of this in the Middle East, after all, it was Hitler’s rocket engineers who set up a rocket programme in post-war Egypt to fight Israel.
Pictures of the shot down drone show that its engine was made by 3W Professional, a Hanau-based company that manufactures two-stroke engines for aerobatic aircraft.
„We are shocked that one of our engines was installed in a drone and that it is being misused by a terrorist organisation,”
reacted 3W CEO Kai Weinhold. He said it was incomprehensible how one of their engines could end up in the drone of a terrorist organisation. „We do not sell our engines to embargoed countries and we comply with all export laws and regulations,” he stresed.
However, this is not the first time that the company’s motors or engines have appeared in the weapons of actors allied with Iran. „3W motors were first found in 2018 in drones used by the Houthis to attack Dubai airports, among other places,” weapons expert Wolf-Christian Paes, who works at the Institute for International Strategic Studies in Berlin, told Welt.
At the time, it was the Samad series of drones developed by Iran. These drones are usually powered by Chinese engines, but German components are more reliable,” the expert pointed out. 3W is not the only German company whose products are misused in this way. Limbach components are sometimes found in Iranian drones and German technology is also used in Iranian missiles. Smaller companies in particular often find it difficult to control where their engines go.
In an earlier investigation, Paes found that a broker in Greece had lied to 3W about the use of the engines. The engines were not destined for the Greek market, as claimed, but were sold on to Iran. In another case, in 2020, the engines were exported via China.
„Unfortunately, we cannot control the resale of our engines. This also means that we cannot prevent some terrorist organisations from using them.”
said the 3W CEO, adding that he had previously alerted the police to the problem.
However, Paes says the problem is that Germany does not even classify these parts as dual-use goods, which means that they are not covered by any international regulations.
„We have a whole range of products in Germany that are used in weapons yet do not fall under the regulation,”
the expert noted. For example, Western components are repeatedly appearing in drones and missiles used against civilians in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
He also said that the German government is quite lax about controlling the buyers of even regulated products. If someone confirms, for example, that the products will not be used for dubious purposes and will not be re-exported, that is enough for the authorities.
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