Omnipol is a company based in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

, specialising in the trading of defence and aerospace equipment.

International sales

Omnipol acts as the intermediary in government-to-government sales of defence equipment, supplying air and ground forces in more than 60 countries.

Possible connections to Lockerbie bombing

From 1975-1981, roughly 700 tons of

Semtex Semtex is a general-purpose plastic explosive containing RDX and Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, PETN. It is used in commercial blasting, demolition, and in certain military applications. Semtex was developed and manufactured in Czechoslovakia, or ...

plastic explosive were purchased and exported to

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...

by Omnipol. As such, implications have been drawn that Semtex usage on the part of militant factions, such as the

Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief tha ...

and the

Palestine Liberation Organization The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalism, Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establ ...

, may have been originally sourced from Omnipol, given Libyan ties to such groups. Notably, it has been alleged that the Semtex utilized to carry out the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over

Lockerbie, Scotland Lockerbie (, gd, Locarbaidh) is a small town in Dumfries and Galloway, south-western Scotland. It is about from Glasgow, and from the border with England. The 2001 Census recorded its population as 4,009. The town came to international atte ...

was indirectly sourced from Omnipol via Libya, which, though not entirely substantiated or corroborated, is consistent with verifiable records of Omnipol's arms sale connections to Libya.

Acquisitions

In April 2022, it was announced that Omnipol had acquired the

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

-owned aerospace company, Aircraft Industries.

References

External links

Omnipol website
{{Authority control Companies of Czechoslovakia Defence companies of the Czech Republic Pan Am Flight 103