Swiss Arms Sales in Afghanistan

Radio Télévision Suisse | 10min
Postproduction script

00:00:03,619 VO: Here is the Pilatus PC-12. How did a civilian business jet popular with the luxury world end up in a bloody bombing? Find out in our investigative report.

0’00 Source: Fly 7 Executive Aviation SA

0’03 Temps Présent: Magazine de Reportages

0’5 Source: Pilatus Aircraft Ltd

00:00:24,040 VO: July 15, 2021, in the Badakhshan Province, in the north of Afghanistan, 8 bombs have just been dropped. The Afghan army had been trying to contain the Taliban, a few weeks before they took power.

0’28 Warning: Disturbing images

0’36 Source: Twitter/@HalimyarF 16.07.2021

0’43 Mustaim Billah, Witness of the bombing

00:00:40,120 Mustaim: I was in the street, over there at the back, I saw the people there and the place was completely destroyed. All the shops were destroyed. There were many martyrs.

00:00:50,360 VO: In a tweet, the Afghan Ministry of Defense congratulated itself on the operation. It said 20 Taliban were neutralized in this attack. No collateral damage was mentioned. Very quickly, however, on social networks, videos appeared with a very different version of events. We discover a market and bodies blown up by the bombs According to the villagers, 12 civilians were killed and 15 wounded in the attack.

1’12 Warning: Disturbing images

1’30 Abdul Saboor, Witness and victim of the bombing

00:01:28,080 Abdul: The first plane was a white plane that circled for an hour. It turned and turned around... After that, two alarms went off and an hour later, another black plane also landed. The mujahideen know these planes and the dangers they represent, so they started to evacuate. So people left in all directions at the market, people were going all over the place. People had no idea where it was going to fall. People don't have a GPS for that.

2’11 Source: Bombardments 15 July Twitter

00:02:03,240 VO: What happened that day? What planes is he talking about? Our investigation will reveal this. We will show you how Swiss planes were directly involved. In order to know for sure the exact location of the bombing, we deconstructed this video second by second. At this moment, two clues appeared: a long row of poplars and a square building. After a few hours of searching, we found them here and here, in the heart of the Shuhada district. The square house was in reality a police station, held by about thirty Taliban. It housed armored vehicles and some heavy weapons. The police station in green is located right next to the market street bombed, here in red. The gatehouse also corresponds.

00:03:00,320 Reporter: - What was the date?

00:03:01,833 Abdul: - It was 1400, it was the 24th of Saratan.

3’02 Abdul Saboor, Witness and victim of the bombing

00:03:09,459 VO: Let's stop for a moment on the date 24 Saratan. In the Gregorian calendar this corresponds to July 15, 2021. On that day, Abdul Saboor claimed to have lost two sons in the bombing. One was a doctor, the other an engineer. So we have a date and a place. Now let's research the planes. We compared the type of screen that we see in the tweet with photos showing the interior of planes used by the Afghan army to monitor the territory.

3’37 Source: Carlo Munoz / Stars and Stripes

00:03:42,920 VO: These planes, nicknamed Dracos, are Pilatus PC-12s manufactured in Stans, Switzerland. Now look: on the left, the images published by the Afghan army. On the right, the photo from the American newspaper "Stars and Stripes" showing the interior of a Pilatus PC-12. From the cabin, the soldier watches in real time the images filmed by the plane. Comparing the two screens, everything is the same: same inscriptions on a black background, same white target on the lens, and same positioning of the GPS coordinates. Everything is there.

4’38 1584m / 00:15 = 378km/h

00:04:19,440 VO: But there is a problem: this type of camera can also be found on drones and helicopters. So how can we be sure that it is a Pilatus? Thanks to the GPS data, we have remodeled the flight very precisely. This time there is no doubt left: the speed is much too fast for a helicopter or a drone. But it matches that of a PC-12. And that's not all. Browsing through military magazines on the internet, we came across this article written by two high ranking American officers, including Major General Robert Walters, a two-star military intelligence specialist. Here again, we found the exact same type of screen capture and a very precise description of the role the Pilatus PC-12 had in the Afghan army bombings.

00:05:07,060 English transcript: The PC-12 played a critical role in the A-29 air strike narrative above. The PC-12 maintained a persistent eye on its target while concurrently confirming the absence of civilians within collateral-damage range. The PC-12 pilot communicated directly with the pilot of A-29, ensuring the pilot’s situational awareness of the target area.

00:05:32,040 VO: Behind these words lies a troubling reality: the fact that Swiss-manufactured aircraft are used in the middle of a conflict. Spy planes that do not bomb but systematically perform a live surveillance of the area to assist the Tucano A-29, in charge of the bombing.

5’59 Pilatus PC-12

6’01 Source: Facebook/@Warsaji Zabiullah 01.03.2018

6’06 Source: Médiathèque DDPS

00:06:02,247 VO: How could these Pilatus end up in Afghanistan while Switzerland, a neutral country, forbids any export of war materials to countries in conflict? Well, these escaped all controls, because they were exported first as civilian aircraft to the US.

6’24 Source: Flickr/@Alistair Forrest

00:06:21,160 VO: We have tracked one of these planes. In 2014, it is spotted as it leaves the factory. Its exit registration was HB-FQV, green color, with the Swiss flag. One year later, it reappeared in dark gray, a white wave under the nose and under American ID.

6’40 Source: Skyppiscage/@Paul Filmer

00:06:44,413 VO: A double pressurized door has appeared, as well as sensors and antennas and an ultra high resolution camera has been integrated into the rear hatch. The goal is to see and hear everything, like an aerial "Big Brother".

6’58 Source: @MoDAfghanistan @PatilSushmit @Afgpatriots

7’05 Source: YouTube/@Mark Iraq 05.06.2019

00:07:02,640 VO: Without it, no bombing would be possible But on August 6, 2021, everything changed. The city of Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban. This footage was shown in a loop on all TVs around the world. While civilians are trying to flee the country by all means, the Americans and Afghan pilots are trying to destroy or secure their planes, to prevent the Taliban from getting their hands on them. So where did these planes go? Out of the 18 Swiss Pilatus used by the Afghan army, one was spotted at the end of August, by this Twitter account. The picture was taken in Bokhtar airport, Tajikistan. But is this plane the only one?

8’01 Source: Planet Labs PBC

00:08:01,680 VO: Thanks to satellite imagery, we've been watching this airport closely for several months. We located the dark gray cabins and measured the wings of each plane to track down the Pilatus. Result: 3 of the 18 PC-12s made in Switzerland landed safely in Tajikistan. But what happened to the others? We looked a little further south, towards Uzbekistan and this is what we found. 11 Pilatus lined up on the tarmac in Termez. That leaves 4 Swiss planes potentially in the hands of the Taliban.

8’42 Pilatus PC-12

8’49 Source: Twitter/@RespectIsVital 31.08.2021

00:08:44,520 VO: At the end of August 2021, a photo published on Twitter intrigued us. Was this man really a Taliban? Was the picture really taken in Kabul? Let's start with the soldier: his helmet, vest and camouflage uniform clearly show this soldier was part of the Badri 313 unit, a battalion of Taliban special forces which gathered their best fighters. This is the unit that took over the airport as soon as the Americans left.

9’17 Source: Twitter/@badri313_army 31.08.2021

00:09:26,600 VO: Checking each of the faces in the videos released that night, we finally spotted the soldier on the photo. And in the same video, these 4 numbers confirm the presence in Kabul of a Pilatus-PC12 made in Switzerland. Our team managed to get into the military part of the airport to check the inside of the hangar. These footage is totally exclusive. You can see not 1 but 2 Pilatus PC-12 parked inside. The first one, with registration number 1443, perfectly matches the one seen at night in the video. No apparent damage is visible. After checking, these two planes were indeed exported by Switzerland. Both of them are under Taliban control. The company Pilatus did not wish to comment.

10’33 Temps Présent: Magazine de Reportages