Campaigners launch legal bid against intl. arms firms

Peace activists in Britain are seeking to legally pursue two international weapons dealers who put illegal torture equipment on display at the 2013 DSEI arms fair in London.

French company Magforce International and Beijing-based Tianjin MyWay International Trading face legal bids launched by campaigners from Stop the Arms Fair campaign group for putting on sale illegal equipment including leg irons and stun batons.

The 2013 DSEI arms fair in London expelled both companies at the time following challenges by activists and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, who complained to Parliament and the exhibition’s organizer that the products they were marketing were banned under British law.

The campaign group lashed out at the arms show “and everything it represents – the corruption, the human misery and the profiteering by a narrow elite at the expense of people and planet,” it said in a statement.

“We fully support the activists. It is no surprise that an event with as little regulation and oversight as DSEI will have companies breaking the law,” said Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesman Andrew Smith.

“What we find more surprising is that it is even possible for an event like DSEI, which brings some of the world’s largest arms producers together with some of the most repressive governments, could be legal in the first place,” he added.

Campaigners hired an arms consultancy company which endorsed their cause and said that many of the products in the companies’ catalogues “fit the description of prohibited weapons.”