International gun smuggling ring broken up in Brabant & Slovakia

In November the police intercepted a large shipment of sub-machine guns arriving in the Netherlands from Slovakia, Metro Nieuws reports. Three suspects, two residents of Oss and a Pole, were arrested. One of the suspects turned out to be a Defense employee. For some time the Netherlands has served as a conduit for illegal weapons. The weapons would disappear into the illegal firearm circuit from Oostblok via the Netherlands, the newspaper reports based on communications between Slovakia and the Netherlands through Europol. Large shipments of Slovak sub-machine guns arrive in the Netherlands on a biweekly basis, after which they are distributed further. The shipment that was intercepted in November contained 35 Scorpion vz61 machine guns hidden in the bottom of a 110 kilogram DHL parcel. The machine guns were hidden in a double bottom and were covered with a layer of sand to prevent X-ray equipment picking up the weapons. The Brabant police received information from the Slovak police which enabled them to intercept the package and make the arrests.