...Rheinmetall AG is...facing legal pressure to justify its actions following the filing of a criminal complaint against its subsidiary RWM Italia...Yemeni human rights activist Bonyan Gamal reported on the research carried out by the NGO Mwatana Organization for Human Rights: According to their research, an airstrike believed to be by the Saudi-led military coalition struck the village of Deir Al-Hajari in Northwest Yemen on 8 October 2016.  The airstrike killed a family of six.  At the scene of the crime, a suspension lug produced by RWM Italia was found...Together with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and Italy-based organization Rete Disarmo, Mwatana filed criminal charges with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome.  The action aims to clarify the responsibilities of the managing directors of RWM Italia and the responsible Italian authority...Otfried Nassauer from the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security was able to rely on current research to conclude that the deliveries of weapons used in Yemen are part of a wider problem.  “These deliveries seem to show a strategy on the part of Rheinmetall to outsource its responsibility to subsidiaries and joint ventures abroad, and to make profit from the war in Yemen...”...Barbara Happe from the NGO urgewald adds: “The German government also risks bearing part of the responsibility if it fails to finally tighten up its purported ban on German arms exports to states involved in the conflict in Yemen. It also has to ban exports by subsidiaries abroad.” ...

More information:

Briefing: “Business with Death – Germany’s Role in Yemen War” (urgewald, 2018) [Available in German]

Study: “Unrestrained in all Parts of the World – Arms Exports by Rheinmetall AG” (BITS, 2016) [Available in German]