GERMAN TROOPS in the Balkans are smuggling lorry-loads of weapons into Western Europe, some of which could be finding their way to terrorists and criminal gangs.
According to Der Spiegel magazine, a German army sergeant-major was convicted of gun-running last November, while a major, a captain and two sergeants are about to go on trial on 10,094 counts of illicit handling of explosives and 7,144 violations of gun laws. They are alleged to have smuggled truck-loads of guns, mortar shells, hand grenades, mines and other explosives into Germany.
The soldiers all worked for the German peace-keeping corps in Kosovo, a country awash with all kinds of weapons, including unexploded bombs dropped during the Nato air campaign in 1999. One of the main tasks of the troops is to locate and destroy all these, as well as guns held by the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Some of the 5,200 German troops stationed in Kosovo were apparently offended by the wasteful nature of their job.
The Germans seized a small arsenal at the Yugoslav army's abandoned barracks in Prizren. But instead of destroying the bounty, as ordered, they organised its transport to their home base in Germany. They were loaded on to army trucks and taken to another base in Yugoslavia. Seven crates of munitions were eventually dispatched to Germany with the help of a private haulage firm. The loot was discovered by customs officers in Darmstadt.
Der Spiegel reports that the scheme was an open secret among the German troops, and even the colonel in charge of the ensuing investigation showed little interest in the content of the 18 crates that remained stranded in the Balkans. What fate awaited the weapons in Germany is unclear. Among the most frequent items were AK-47 rifles - a popular weapon for terrorists - which can easily be sold on the black market.
The peace-keeping forces in the Balkans are the first big deployment of German troops abroad since the Second World War. While their military conduct so far has been beyond reproach, this is the second scandal surrounding the Germans' personal behaviour. Last year some of their soldiers in Kosovo were accused of involvement in child prostitution.