The black market for weapons in Europe serves terror cells

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“Marine and land containers are used to smuggle huge numbers of weapons to Europe and they are in the hands of terror cells,” an Israeli security experts told i-HLS.

The Charlie Hebdo shooters used AK-47 assault rifles, a firearm that is smuggled all around the EU’s open borders.

According to International Business Times, despite stringent firearms controls and ramped-up efforts to combat illegal gun trafficking, thousands of “war weapons” remain strewn across the European Union’s 28 member states. Many, like the AK-47 assault rifles used by the gunmen who fired at the staff inside the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on Wednesday, are bought by gun collectors, organized crime affiliates and, as was the case this week, terrorists.

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There is no definitive count, but the bloc estimates that around half a million lost or stolen firearms remained unaccounted for within the EU. And that only accounts for weapons that were once registered and later went missing.

Many of the automatic “war weapons” are illegally trafficked from the Balkan Peninsula and former Soviet Bloc states, where millions of leftover arms from the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovo wars are regularly stolen, bought and transferred in small numbers, mostly to organized crime clients in Southern Europe, according to Gunpolicy.org.

In France, there are an estimated 10 million to 20 million illegal weapons alone, according to a Christian Science Monitor report.

Israeli experts said that the open borders policy in the EU makes it very easy to smuggle weapons in “huge numbers” from country to country. Some of the weapons are being offered on the Deep Web and price lists are published there.