from smashEDO, 22 May 2007
At 6am on Monday morning, outside the premises of EDO-MBM, Home Farm Road, Brighton, students from Sussex University, including Student Union president Dan Glass, have locked themselves to the Brighton arms factory using D-locks preventing access to the factory.
One man has been arrested for aggravated trespass.
EDO produces weapons components used by the Israeli military and by US and UK forces in Iraq. The students are protesting against EDO’s complicity in the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Palestine.
Sussex University has been developing close links with Al Quds Open University in Tubas, Palestine. A delegation from Sussex University recently visited Tubas and heard what conditions are like for students living under occupation. The delegation was told that in 2004 two children were killed close to the university by Israeli forces firing Hellfire missiles from an F16. EDO MBM manufactures components for both the Hellfire missile and the Israeli F16.
Amy Jameson, a History Student at the university said ‘Sussex students have been hearing firsthand accounts of war crimes against students in Tubas and this company is providing equipment that is facilitating these crimes’.
Rose Holland, studying International Relations said ‘The government subsidises the arms trade by up to £900 million per year while they continue to cut funding for higher education. We want books not bombs.’
Who are EDO?
from smashEDO
Brighton-based EDO MBM are a wholly owned subsidiary of EDO Corp, a US-based arms multinational that is currently number 10 on the Forbes 100 list of fastest growing companies.
EDO’s military products include bomb racks, release clips and arming mechanisms for warplanes. They have contracts with the UK Ministry of ‘Defence’ and US arms giant Raytheon relating to the release mechanisms of the Paveway bomb system.
EDO MBM’s supply of weapons systems for the illegal aggression and subesquent war crimes committed in Iraq makes their directors war criminals. International law is very clear on this point, in the 1947 trial of Bruno Tesch, a German industrialist, the court acted
“on the principle that any civilian who is an accessory to a violation of the laws and customs of war is himself also liable as a war criminal”.