Bern: complaint against the purchase of Israeli hermes drones

On Monday, the group for an army without an army (GSSA), the Swiss Human Rights League of Geneva, the Swiss Association of Lawyers for Palestine (ASAP) and a Palestinian couple brought legal action before the Supreme Court of the canton of Bern. They ask that the Swiss Confederation breaks the contract which links it with the Israeli arms company Elbit for the purchase of six hermes of recognition drones.

“It is a question of denouncing a contract which has already cost 300 million francs to Swiss taxpayers for the purchase of dysfunctional drones manufactured by a company whose priority is to provide an army accused of war crimes”, explains in “Time”, Emma Lidén, the lawyer of the complainants. And to add: “It is not possible for Switzerland to claim to be the depositary of the Geneva conventions, while remaining silent on their violation and maintaining a contract which represents a technical alliance with a central actor of the Israeli war apparatus”.

In 2024, in Parliament, the left had already denounced, without success, the purchase of its drones for the same reasons.

It is one more episode in the endless acquisition of these six Hermes drones commanded in 2015 already by the Confederation for around 300 million francs, and none of which worked to satisfy. Last January, federal finance control has severely criticized this purchase in a report and made this observation: “Due to the lack of global project planning, it is not possible to reliably assess your progress and determine when the system will be completed as soon as possible”.

The date of 2029 has been put forward for the delivery of drones, fifteen years after having placed orders and already spent 288 million francs.

The political complaint against the purchase of drones from the Israelis may be without object. The new army chief, Martin Pfister, announced last week that the relevance of the purchase of the Hermes was questioned. And that after having paid almost everything for machines that do not support the cold at altitude because of a defective defrost system.