By Gustavius Smith, The Tribune<\/p>\n
\nThe Bahamas is under suspicion of buying arms from the UK and diverting them to other destinations, according to a leading British newspaper.<\/p>\n
\nAn international think tank called Saferworld has made the claim in a review of the UK’s arms trade.<\/p>\n
\n“We have had comments before, nothing as negative as that,” said Mark Wilson, permanent secretary at the Ministry of National Security.<\/p>\n
\nHis comments came yesterday after being notified that the UK based Sunday paper, The Observer, published Saferworld’s suspicions that The Bahamas may be diverting arms internally and outside the country.<\/p>\n
\n“I seem to recall a long time ago a US paper took up the question of the State Department authorising the sale of ammunition to The Bahamas – that was when the Defence Force was being formed,” added Mr. Wilson.<\/p>\n
\nSaferworld, based in the UK, is an independent foreign affairs think-tank working to identify, develop and publicise more effective approaches to preventing armed conflict worldwide, particularly in “conflict-laden” regions.<\/p>\n
\nIn the UK Saferworld monitors arms exports and is working to ensure that the country’s new export control legislation is comprehensive and vigorously implemented.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to the UK government’s annual report on weapons exports released last month, The Bahamas imported components for assault rifles, components for general purpose machine guns, components for semi-automatic pistols and components for sub-machine guns.<\/p>\n
\nOn its web site, www.Saferworld.org.uk, the organisation highlighted armaments bought by The Bahamas from the UK last year.<\/p>\n
\nMr. Wilson said he has an idea of what may have caused the suspicion.<\/p>\n
\n“The prison purchased supplies last year for the first time in a long time. They had some decrepit shotguns that needed to be replaced or fixed so the amount of armament we bought was slightly higher than normal,” he said.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to the annual budget for the year 2002\/2003 government purchased $50,000 in “military equipment” for the Royal Bahamas Police Force and prison department and an additional $50,000 on “arms ammunitions, weapons and spare parts” for the Royal Bahamas Defence Force in 2001.<\/p>\n
\nThe prison had set aside $150,000 for armaments but they did not spend it all, said Mr. Wilson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UK Think Tank Arouses Suspicion Regarding Purchases<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240527,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239517\/revisions\/240527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}