Best seller G36: Demonstrators in Mexico were shot with the Heckler and Koch assault rifle.
Foto: picture alliance / dpa
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The Mexican state of Guerrero achieved notoriety in 2014: in the city of Iguala, corrupt police officers surrounded buses of students who were on their way to a demonstration. The officers opened fire without warning, and six people died. 43 surviving students were then allegedly kidnapped by the police, handed over to a drug cartel and murdered by it. The exact processes are still unclear. The fact is: at least seven police officers shot with G36 rifles made in Germany.
The weapons came from a delivery of around 4,500 rifles that had been sold to Mexico between 2006 and 2009 by the Swabian arms company Heckler & Koch (H&K). Officially, the weapons should not have reached troubled provinces like Guerrero. A year-long legal battle over the question of the responsibility of the German arms companies and the official control bodies is now entering the next stage: On Thursday, the Federal Court of Justice began negotiating the appeal in the case of illegal arms exports to Mexico. “The judgment will point the way for the German export licensing practice,” said Carola Hausotter, coordinator of the German Human Rights Coordination Mexico, opposite “nd”. In terms of content, a lot was still open at the end of the first day of the trial, a judgment is expected for March 11th.
Originally, the lawyer Holger Rothbauer and the peace activist Jürgen Grässlin from the Armaments Information Office started the process with a complaint in 2010. In 2019, the Stuttgart Regional Court pronounced a verdict for the first time against H&K and two former employees. The court found it proven that the license to export the assault rifles to Mexico had been obtained with false information. The weapons were supposed to be used only in “peaceful” provinces, but actually ended up in four regions where human rights violations were the order of the day. The court sentenced the gunsmiths to a fine of 3.7 million euros – the proceeds from the sales of the Mexican business – and the two employees, a sales manager and a clerk, to suspended sentences.
The former district court president Peter Beyerle, then export representative and managing director at H&K, as well as two other employees from the management level were acquitted. Another accused was in Mexico and was not included in the trial. The judges assessed the group’s actions as a gang export of goods due to fraudulent approval under the Foreign Trade Act. The company, the two employees and the public prosecutor’s office had appealed. The latter does not question the acquittals, but calls for more severe penalties for the employees.
So-called end-use declarations are the core element of German arms exports. In it, for example, the Mexican state undertakes to the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control to only deliver the weapons it purchases to unproblematic regions of the country and not to sell them on to third countries. In the case of the H&K rifles, however, according to the court, the German employees, together with the Mexican authorities, deliberately provided false information. So what is the value of such explanations anyway? According to the Stuttgart regional court, at least not a large one.
In addition: The federal government officially admitted in 2019 that it allowed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for example, to use German military equipment in the Yemen war. If it appears politically legitimate, end-use declarations can also be officially ignored or considered unnecessary.
According to Jürgen Grässlin, the Federal Court of Justice had at least signaled in its first session on Thursday that end-use declarations are a legally binding part of export permits. “I hope that the verdict will be absolutely clear,” the peace activist told “nd” after the hearing. The trial against H&K clearly showed that the official mechanisms have not yet worked. “What is needed here is a new, efficient arms export control law,” said Grässlin.
The attorney general also made it clear on Thursday that the illegal deliveries of the G36 assault rifles had been a breach of the War Weapons Control Act, as the activist reported. This could increase the penalties for the two corporate employees. “The acquittal for the former export agent and H&K managing director is unfortunately legally binding and cannot be revoked by the BGH,” said the complainant Grässlin. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights had also insisted that the management level of the group must take responsibility.
The importance of the procedure is meanwhile also emphasized by Tobias Pflüger, MP of the Left Party. “We have a model trial for the practice and control of arms exports – a clear stance by the Federal Court of Justice would be an enormous success,” the politician told “nd”. The MP refers to several cases in recent years in which German weapons had landed in crisis regions despite declarations of end-use, such as northern Syria. There are currently no real sanctions for violations of arms export regulations at EU level. “Clear statutory control regulations are needed here at both national and EU level,” demanded Pflüger.
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