Report: Hundreds of insurgents found in body armor supplied to Iraqi police

Above: A soldier with the 5th Cavalry Regiment shows the hole in his body armor after he was shot by an insurgent. He was in his Bradley Fighting Vehicle when he took the round to the chest in June.

HUNDREDS OF Iraqi insurgents killed or captured in battle by American-led coalition forces have been found to be wearing state-of-the-art Czech-manufactured body armour. The latest findings have added to mounting concern about the quantity and sophistication of military equipment reaching Islamist fighters, sectarian death squads and al-Qaeda terror gangs inside Iraq.

The riddle of the provenance of the Czech body armour highlights the very thin dividing line between legal and smuggled arms and other war materiel sloshing around in Iraq. According to the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based research organisation, seven million unauthorised guns are now in civilians' hands in a country of 27 million.

For months the US military command in Iraq has suspected that illegal shipments of Czech-made body armour and other equipment have been reaching rebels in increasing quantities...

Last week, Pavla Kopecka, a spokeswoman for the Czech police headquarters, confirmed America's request for help in the investigation...

The consignment of 6000 flak jackets had been manufactured by a Czech defence department-approved firm in Jevicko, northwest Moravia, and legally exported to Baghdad, Kopecka said.

The real surprise of the Prague investigation, carried out by the Czech organised crime squad, was that the vests had been legally supplied to the Iraqi police at a cost of $2.7million...

Kopecka added: "The problems occurred in Iraq. I could only speculate as to how the body armour delivered to the Iraqi police reached the insurgents."

Read the rest at the Sunday Herald

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