HARARE – Lithuania is exploring the option of donating 17 fire engines seized at one of its ports last year while they were being shipped to Zimbabwe to war torn Ukraine, an official said.
The fire trucks were impounded at the Klaipėda port in March last year, Lithuanian authorities said because of sanctions on Belarus and Red Lion, the company which supplied them.
“A pre-trial investigation is being conducted, and the prosecutor has decided, if I’m not mistaken, that the 17 vehicles that were to be shipped to Zimbabwe should be confiscated and the issue of their possible delivery to Ukraine is being considered,” Lithuania’s Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė told Ukrainska Pravda.
Zimbabwe has called on Lithuania to release the fire trucks, insisting that their seizure has no legal basis.
“We have a decision by the prosecutor in which we are informing the Zimbabwean attorney general that these 17 fire engines have been confiscated because the company that manufactured these vehicles is subject to sanctions and Zimbabwe itself is also subject to sanctions,” Grunskienė added.
She said Zimbabwe had also been informed of the decision through diplomatic channels.
“We are waiting to see if they will exercise their right to appeal,” Grunskienė added.
Zimbabwe’s attorney general Virginia Mabhiza visited Lithuania earlier this year to request the return of the vehicles but was rebuffed.
Mabhiza told ZimLive: “The explanation we were given was that the fire tenders or certain components on the fire tenders were manufactured by a Belarusian company which is on EU sanctions.
“Zimbabwe maintains that we are an innocent third party who bought the fire tenders without any knowledge of such details.”
Zimbabwe government spokesman Ndavaningi Mangwana said the fire engines were required urgently for “firefighting operations, protecting life and property as well as preserving Zimbabwe’s world heritage sites and the crucial crops that defied the devastating drought.”
