Arms trafficking or gunrunning is the illicit trade of contraband small arms and ammunition, which constitutes part of a broad range of illegal activities often associated with transnational criminal organizations. The illegal trade of small arms, unlike other organized crime commodities, is more closely associated with exercising power in communities instead of achieving economic gain. Scholars estimate illegal arms transactions amount to over US$1 billion annually.
The right to keep and bear arms is a right for people to possess weapons (arms) for the preservation of life, liberty, and property. Only a few countries recognize an individual right to keep and bear arms and protect it constitutionally, with more classifying it as a statutory privilege granted to some segment of the population.
The Brabant killers, also named the Nijvel Gang in Dutch-speaking media, and the mad killers of Brabant in French-speaking media, are responsible for a series of violent attacks that mainly occurred in the Belgian province of Brabant between 1982 and 1985. A total of 28 people died and 22 were injured. The actions of the gang, believed to consist of a core of three men, made it Belgium's most notorious unsolved crime spree. The active participants were known as The Giant ; the Killer and the Old Man. The identities and whereabouts of the "Brabant killers" are unknown. Although significant resources are still dedicated to the case, the most recent arrests are of the now-retired original senior detectives themselves.
A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. A royal commission is similar in function to a commission of inquiry found in other countries such as Ireland, South Africa, and regions such as Hong Kong. It has considerable powers, generally greater even than those of a judge but restricted to the terms of reference of the commission. These powers include subpoenaing witnesses, taking evidence under oath and requesting documents.
The Senate is one of the two chambers of the bicameral Federal Parliament of Belgium, the other being the House of Representatives. It is considered to be the "upper house" of the Federal Parliament. Created in 1831 as a chamber fully equal to the Chamber of Representatives, it has undergone several reforms in the past, most notably in 1993 and 2014. The 2014 elections were the first without a direct election of senators. Instead, the new Senate is composed of members of community and regional parliaments and co-opted members. It is a chamber of the communities and regions and serves as a platform for discussion and reflection about matters between these federated entities. The Senate today plays a minor role in the federal legislative process. However, the Senate, together with the Chamber, has full competence for the Constitution and legislation on the organization and functioning of the Federal State and the federated entities. Since the reform of 2014, it holds about ten plenary sessions a year.
Operation Gladio is the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies. The operation was designed for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest of Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries.
The Chamber of Representatives is one of the two chambers in the bicameral Federal Parliament of Belgium, the other being the Senate. It is considered to be the "lower house" of the Federal Parliament.
The Parliament of Romania is the national legislature of Romania, consisting of the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate (Senat). It meets at the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest.
The Senate of Kazakhstan is the upper house of two chambers in Kazakhstan's legislature, known as the Parliament (Parlamenti). The Senate is composed of elected members: two from each region and two from three municipalities which are Almaty, Nur-Sultan, and Shymkent.
Felice Casson is an Italian magistrate and politician, who discovered the existence of Operation Gladio, a "stay-behind" NATO anti-communist army during the Cold War, while investigating on the Peteano bombing in 1972, for which two neo-fascists were convicted; the explosives used in the attack supposedly came from a NATO arms cache. 622 Gladio members, including two people who served as prime minister and president, were exposed in the course of the investigation.
The Belgian stay-behind network, colloquially called "Gladio", was a secret mixed civilian and military unit, trained to form a resistance movement in the event of a Soviet invasion and part of a network of similar organizations in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation states. It functioned from at least 1951 until 1990, when the Belgian branch was promptly and officially dissolved after its existence became publicly known following revelations concerning the Italian branch of the stay-behind network.
U.S. Army Field Manual 30-31B is a document claiming to be a classified appendix to a U.S. Army Field Manual that describes top secret counterinsurgency tactics. In particular, it identifies a "strategy of tension" involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action. It has been called the Westmoreland Field Manual because it is signed with the alleged signature of General William Westmoreland. It was labelled as supplement B, although the publicly released version of FM30-31 only has one appendix, Supplement A.
The Italian parliamentary Antimafia Commission is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The first commission, formed in 1963, was established as a body of inquiry tasked with investigating the "phenomenon of the [Sicilian] Mafia". Subsequent commissions expanded their scope to investigate all "organized crime of the Mafia type", which included other major criminal organizations in Italy such as the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita.
The Fichenaffäre or Secret files scandal shook public opinion in Switzerland in 1989. That year, it was revealed that the Swiss federal authorities, as well as the cantonal police forces, had put in place a system of mass surveillance of the population.
Projekt-26, best known as P-26, was a stay-behind army in Switzerland charged with countering a possible invasion of the country. The existence of P-26 as secret intelligence agencies dissimulated in the military intelligence agency (UNA) was revealed in November 1990 by the PUK EMD Parliamentary Commission headed by senator Carlo Schmid. The commission, whose initial aim was to investigate the alleged presence of secret files on citizens constituted in the Swiss Ministry of Defence, was created in March 1990 in the wake of the Fichenaffäre or Secret Files Scandal, during which it had been discovered that the federal police, BUPO, had maintained files on 900,000 persons.
Albert Raes was a Belgian magistrate and was head of the Belgian Security Services from 1977 until 1990.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1053, adopted unanimously on 23 April 1996, after recalling all previous resolutions on Rwanda, particularly resolutions 918 (1994), 997 (1995), 1011 (1995) and 1013 (1995), the Council reviewed the findings of the Commission of Inquiry concerning violations of the arms embargo against former Rwandan government forces.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1161, adopted unanimously on 9 April 1998, after recalling all previous resolutions on Rwanda, particularly resolutions 918 (1994), 997 (1995), 1011 (1995), 1013 (1995) and 1053 (1996), the Council reactivated the Commission of Inquiry concerning violations of the arms embargo against former Rwandan government forces.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1533, adopted unanimously on 12 March 2004, after recalling all previous resolutions on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the council established a committee to monitor an arms embargo imposed on all foreign and Congolese forces in the east of the country.
