Hezbollah kit still a mystery

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2323059,00.html
Hezbollah kit still a mystery - World - Times Online

"
Hezbollah kit still a mystery
By Michael Evans

THE mystery of the “British-made” military
night-vision equipment found in a Hezbollah bunker
in southern Lebanon remained unresolved yesterday.

The Times tracked down the British company that
supplied Iran, the terror group’s backers, with 250
sets of such equipment several years ago. One of the
concerns was that Iran may have passed on some of
the equipment to Hezbollah for detecting Israeli
troops going across the border into Lebanon at night
during the six-week conflict.

Sources at the firm, SDMS, of London, said that the
published serial numbers on one of the kits found by
the Israelis did not match any aspect of the
contract that it had won to supply Iran with
equipment for counter-narcotics operations on the
Iranian-Afghan border.

The Israelis claimed that the equipment they had
uncovered in a house in a village in southern
Lebanon was for highly sophisticated military use.
They confirmed that it was British, and the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office promised a full investigation.

One source at the company, which is a distribution
firm, not a manufacturer, said: “The kit we supplied
was actually made in Russia, which makes some pretty
rugged equipment. But they were not the sort of
systems which the Israelis seem to be talking about.”

Foreign Office sources said that night-vision
equipment had also been sold to Lebanon and to
Israel in the past, and some officials considered it
was possible that the systems that found their way
into the hands of Hezbollah fighters might have
emanated from “somewhere closer to home”.

  British troops in southern Afghanistan have
complained that they have insufficient supplies of
night-vision goggles for their operations against
the Taleban.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said that
further sets were being sent.
"

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