Italian police have now seized 800 shotguns that were destined for Belgium from Turkey from a truck that arrived in Trieste.
The finance police, which is often in charge of port security, said that while customs rules had not been violated but the Turkish truck driver did not have the licences needed to transport the 781 Winchester SXP shotguns.
Pump-action Winchester SXP rifles are made for hunting and are not considered assault weapons, but police said they had ‘substantially’ increased their border inspections in the wake of the November 13 Paris attacks and subsequent alert in Belgium.
In a statement, the police said: ‘Given the delicate nature of the cargo, its origin and its destination, the documentation regarding the rifles was immediately examined.’
According to the company’s website, the shotguns seized are the fastest pump-action rifles in the market, capable of delivering three shots in half a second.
The Islamist militants who killed 130 people in the French capital mainly used Kalashnikov assault rifles, or AK-47s.
A spokesperson for Trieste police told The Local that the driver is not suspected of any wrongdoing but that a legal representative of the Turkish company which makes the weapons has been reported.
‘We are in the process of exchanging information with Belgian authorities. At the moment there are no more details to share. We don’t know what the objective for the arms was, we are working on finding this out,’ the Local quoted the police spokesperson as saying.
Read More: 847 shotguns seized in Italy en route from Turkey to Belgium
