• UPDATE, 2 MARCH 2011: The Maltese government claims it accidentally added an extra '0' to its arms figures for 2009 - you can read the report on MaltaToday.com here.
Which EU countries armed Libya under Gaddafi? The EU arms sales to Libya statistics, collected by the European Union, are not exactly public knowledge.
We only know about them because of some excellent work by Dan O'Huiggin, who found the complete breakdown of EU military exports in some distant corner of the Europa website and published a breakdown of 2009, the latest year available.
The data, only available as a PDF, is tricky to export but we bring you the latest five years here. It covers from 2005 (the first year after the end of the arms embargo in 2004) right up to 2009.
Last week we looked at the UK's exports to the Middle East and North Africa. How does the EU data compare?
The key points are:
• The EU granted export licenses for €834.5m worth of arms exports in the first five years after the arms embargo was lifted in October 2004
• 2009 is the highest amount ever: €343.7m
• Italy is the top exporter, with €276.7m over the five years
• The UK got off to a big start in 2005, with €58.9m of the €72.2m total. UK licenses over the five years are worth €119.35m
• Malta saw some €79.7m of guns go through the Island en route to Libya in 2009 - apparently sold via an Italian company
It's worth checking out Dan O'Huiggin's round-up of the brilliant European coverage of these sales for examples of the arms trade in action.
Where do I get the data?
There's no single entry point. You can find the 2009 report here and this search term will get you 2008 as well. You can get earlier years here too.
There are some caveats you should take into account too - these are licenses, so actual sales could be less. They also don't show who the end-user is. So, for example, some of the French licenses are undoubtedly granted for UK companies exporting via Paris. The data is perhaps deliberately obscure.
But we've got the full five years below. What can you do with it?
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