Recently released ISIS footage out of Syria shows two men being executed- one for being a member of the rival militant group (Liwa al Majed) and the other for being a government spy, according to Terror Monitor.
However, the most curious detail of the whole video isn’t the executed or their executioners. It is the pistols used in the incident and their origin.
The video depicts two Generation 3 Glock 19s, one with what several experts -many of them Glock Armorers- agree to be a modification on the slide plate to allow fully automatic capabilities.
These Glocks may very well be one of the 80,000 pistols -most of them Glocks- that went missing back in the peak of the Iraq War, after Iraqi Security Forces “lost” them between 2004-2006. According to a 2007 AFP article, a 2007 US Congressional body established that the American military had lost trace of some 190,000 weapons delivered in 2004 and 2005. Less than 3 percent of the weapons shipped were still accounted for in 2007. In a country where a handgun is a symbol of status, the Glock became the official weapon of the Islamic Army in Iraq and also found itself being trafficked outside of Iraqi borders.
Former Iraqi police officers and senior U.S. official report that the Glock pistols could be obtained on the black market fairly easily. “The Americans gave us Glocks without registering the serial number and without receipts,” a former policeman called Yasser told AFP in a 2007 interview. After leaving his unit in late 2004, he sold his Glock to “a friend” for 800 dollars. The highly sought after pistol, known for ruggedness and ease of use, have been smuggled out of Iraq into neighboring countries.
A 2007 Newsweek investigation uncovered Glock pistols, bought by the US government for the Iraqi police, being sold in Turkey for as much as $3,500. A senior Turkish security official claimed as many as 20,000 US-bought Glock 9mm pisotls were brought into Turkey from Iraq during the years of 2004-2007.
“I do suppose that it is possible for weapons that we provided to the Iraqi Security Forces may have ended up in the wrong hands,” Colonel Dan Williams, a Pentagon Inspector at the time admitted.
Attempts are being made by outside sources to retrieve the serial number of one of the pistols in the video, in an effort to help determine information such as manufacture date and whether the pistols originated from Austria or the Glock factory in Smyrna, GA.
The Glock Director of Public Affairs was unavailable for comment at this time.
Michael Swaney contributed to this report
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