Suppressed: German Federal Intelligence Service’s cooperating with KLA , ARD Television Network(Munich) 24 September 1998
In its Monitor magazine program at 1900 GMT on 24 September, Munich, ARD Television Network in German carries a 7-minute report by Jo Angerer and Volker Happe which alleges that the Albanian Liberation Army [UCK] is using German weapons.
The report starts off by showing UCK fighters in villages near the Albanian border. An unidentified UCK commander says that they will defend their villages “until Kosovo becomes independent.” Asked what arms they are using, he replies that “we have enough weapons to fight until Kosovo becomes independent.”
The report then shows Serb soldiers who have caught an UCK arms smuggler at the Albanian border. The reporters say that “anyone who is caught smuggling arms here is shot.” When they search the smuggled goods, the soldiers find ammunition of Chinese origin, but also hi-tech arms, such as “Armbrust” anti-tank grenade launchers, “which the German company MBB developed for the German Bundeswehr, and which were built in Singapore under German license,” the report states.
It continues to say that German anti-tank grenade launchers were also among the weapons that Serb troops showed to international correspondents a couple of days earlier, saying that these had been seized from arms smugglers. Beside these arms, the correspondents were also shown radio equipment and military monitoring equipment, some of which came from Germany, Angerer and Happe say.
Monitor says that Germany was “cooperating closely” with Albania in the early 1990s, after the Communist regime in Tirana collapsed. It says that in 1990 and 1991 the German Federal Intelligence Service’s (BND) resident in Tirana was involved in “several illegal arms supplies,” which had been arranged by the Military Counter Intelligence Service (MAD) in Cologne.
A former MAD official, who was involved in the arms supplies and did not want to be identified, is quoted as saying that the arms supplies were ordered “by the very top” and that the operation is still being treated as strictly confidential today.
The report continues to say that another informer who was involved in the operation has confirmed these statements. A written statement by that informer is read out, which says that “in 1990 and 1991, the MAD supplied electronic and optical monitoring equipment and other equipment, such as radios, to the Albanian intelligence service. The monitoring equipment came from the former GDR’s Ministry for State Security, which the Bundeswehr took over after unification, and from MAD supplies. MAD officials trained Albanian intelligence service personnel in Tirana to use this equipment.”
Monitor concludes that it was via these channels that the military equipment from Germany has reached the UCK. It continues to say that the Federal Defense Ministry “has denied the MAD supplies to Albania, as well as the training of Albanian intelligence service personnel.”
Yet, “several eyewitnesses from both the BND and the MAD confirmed to Monitor that members of the Bundeswehr’s school for communications in Bad Ems visited the Albanian capital Tirana for that purpose on several occasions, and so did members of the MAD in Cologne,” says the report.
Intelligence service expert Erich Schmidt-Eenboom states that the “training of Albanian intelligence service personnel by MAD employees isnot at all consistent with the MAD law of December 1990.”
The report concludes by saying that the German Government “has also helped the Albanian Army quite legally, by supplying military vehicles, combat equipment, and even engines for combat aircraft” in 1996. This military equipment is “now being used in Kosovo,” Angerer and Happe say.
