(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - British weapons manufacturer Chemring Defence, formerly known as PW Defence supplied Egypt with CS gas canisters its security forces fired at civilian protesters during recent clashes.
The UK government was accused of having “serious flaws” in its controls on arms exports to the Middle East after it was revealed that the Egyptian police were using British-made tear gas to defeat political dissent.
Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square experienced symptoms of burning, skin irritation, difficulty breathing, chest pain, and loss of feeling in their limbs after they were exposed to CS gas during the clashes, the report said.
Many collected the discarded rounds after they had been fired during more than 120 hours of protests against the military rulers' reluctance to transfer power to a civilian rule within a timely timeframe.
Amongst those collected were the red-striped 38mm long-range rounds produced by Chemring Defence, seen by the Independent on Sunday.
Serial numbers and lot numbers were seen on a number of canisters, which are being used to track their journey from the UK to Egypt.
“They shot many canisters like this one at the same time... It causes so much tearing; it makes your chest hurt so badly. It burns when you're sweating and it causes you to shake”, said a protester who found one of the discarded rounds.
Ghada Shahbender, a member of the board of directors of the Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights, who found one of the British CS canisters after disturbances last June, said the weapons are “harming democratic reform” because they “end up in the hands of those who abuse them.”
Amnesty International UK's Arms Programme Director Oliver Sprague called for tear gas to be included in a new international arms trade treaty to be agreed at the UN next year.
"The use of UK tear gas against civilians in Egypt in the latest brutal crackdown, provides yet more damning evidence of serious flaws that successive governments have allowed to go unchecked.”
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