Under pressure from a Human Rights Investigations probe into cluster bombs, the usually secretive Spanish government has released some limited information regarding their exports of cluster bombs. Spanish government information shows 2,271 MAT-120s were stockpiled on 2 December 2008 and 1,852 were destroyed by the end of 2008 with 419 retained. Latest Spanish Government Claims According […]
Category: Spain
As regular readers will know, HRI has been investigating the sordid world of the Spanish cluster bomb industry. Now Spanish officials (not known for releasing specific information about arms exports) have reportedly claimed the cluster bombs found in Misrata, (type MAT-120 made by Instalaza) were never exported to the USA. However, they refuse to provide the actual evidence, documents, […]
Little is known about the secretive (and now largely outsourced) Spanish cluster bomb industry – until its products turn up in foreign lands. Spain has signed up to, but not yet implemented into domestic legislation, the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It is time Spain implemented the legislation and also provided full transparency about its past activities, […]
Analysis of official Spanish government documents indicates Spanish company Instalaza may not have exported the MAT-120 cluster weapon to Libya in 2007/08. In the 2008 report, Libya is listed as a recipient of category 4 munitions (which include bombs) – this is the source of the reports that Libya was provided with the MAT-120 by […]
According to El Mundo of Madrid, Instalaza have denied selling the MAT-120 – the cluster munition fired into Misrata – to Libya. * So how did the story get around that these munitions, which killed many civilians inside Misrata, must have been fired by Gadaffi forces? Human Rights Watch and the New York Times, perhaps […]
Human rights investigations 