Netanyahu Lawyer Part of Operation to Build Israeli Drones in Serbia

Israeli lawyer Zion Amir, currently representing PM Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of three directors of a company now producing Israeli drones in Serbia, BIRN/Haaretz can reveal. Unveiling Serbia’s first factory producing Israeli drones, President Aleksandar Vucic took to Instagram on September 17 to tout the 100 jobs it had created and the “most modern equipment” it would supply to the Serbian army and “the armies of some other countries”. The press wasn’t invited, with Vucic citing the sensitivity of the project. In its own Instagram post, the Israeli embassy said Ambassador Avivit Bar-Ilan had attended the event and hailed the “cooperation between Serbia’s local defense industry” and Israeli defence sector giant Elbit Systems. What neither mentioned, however, was the involvement of Zion Amir, a prominent Israeli lawyer currently representing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the Israeli Supreme Court. The lawyer’s role, revealed here for the first time, comes via the Serbian-based company SDS Technologies, of which he is a director. The factory premises, in Belgrade’s Makis neighbourhood, is emblazoned with the SDS brand name, as were the clothes worn by employees demonstrating the drones to Vucic at the opening, in a video the president posted on Instagram (see stills from video below). In Serbia’s business registry, the company name ‘SDS Technologies’ appeared within hours of the factory’s opening, not as a new firm, however, but as the new name of a company previously called CUPA Enterprises. The very same day, September 17, Amir was formally appointed as a director of SDS. Vucic said previously that ownership of the drone venture would be shared equally by Serbia and Israel. The ownership structure of SDS Technologies, however, does not reflect this. SDS is in fact owned by London-registered CUPA Limited, itself majority-owned by Greek national Athanasios Ramos. On September 21, four days after the factory opened, CUPA Limited changed its name to Blue Liberty International Ltd. Elbit System, the designer of the drones, told BIRN it “collaborates with local companies in several European countries as part of localisation processes and efforts to tailor its offerings to customer needs”. It denied any link to SDS, however, or to Amir. It stressed it does not own, nor is a partner in, any drone facility in Serbia. Lawyer representing Netanyahu before Supreme Court BIRN reporters first visited the Makis factory site several months ago, for an exclusive story about Serbia’s plan to open a drone factory with Elbit. Situated alongside several other businesses and warehouses, the factory gates were branded with the name SDS Technologies. At the time, there was no such company in Serbia’s business registry. Today, SDS Technologies has three directors: Greek national Maria Kardamaki, Lebanese-born US citizen George Antoine Elghossain, and Amir. Since last year, Amir has been representing Netanyahu and his government before the Supreme Court in five petitions against the government’s decision to dismiss Ronen Bar as head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. According to Haaretz’s reporting, Bar had warned Netanyahu of a potential attack on Israel in a phone call before the Palestinian militant group Hamas struck on October 7, 2023, triggering Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. Israel’s state prosecutor argued that Netanyahu’s removal of Bar was unlawful, given the conflict of interest arising from the fact Shin Bet was investigating the alleged involvement of Netanyahu associates in the paid promotion of Qatari interests in Israel, so-called ‘Qatargate’. One of those associates is Srulik Einhorn, who has also advised Vucic. Amir declined to answer questions about his involvement in SDS Technologies and the new drone factory in Serbia. The website of SDS Technologies is little more than a homepage, offering no other information. The domain was registered on January 18 this year; the domain owner’s information in the WHOIS registry – a platform that allows access to basic registration data – is hidden. Historical data shows the same domain was registered before and used by an IT firm offering web and software services. According to archived snapshots on the Wayback Machine, the firm listed Chandigarh, in northern India, as its address. BIRN sent questions to the official email address of SDS Technologies but received no reply. Calls to the phone number listed on the website also went unanswered. Elbit’s drones and its director at the opening BIRN/Haaretz previously reported that Elbit Systems would hold 51 per cent ownership of the drone production facility in Serbia; 49 per cent would be controlled by Serbian state-owned arms trader Yugoimport SDPR. Indeed, photos from the factory opening this month do feature Ran Krill, Elbit’s executive vice president for international marketing and business development since 2015. Left to right: Ran Kril, Vice President of Elbit, Nenad Miloradovic, Serbian Assistant Minister of Defence for Material Resources, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Israel’s ambassador to Serbia, Avivit Bar-Ilan. Photo: Israel in Serbia/Facebook.Elbit was also named as a partner in the project by the Israeli embassy, and Vucic named three types of Elbit drone that would be assembled at the Belgrade site and later also manufactured: the Lanius-X drone, the FireFox-X attack drone, and the Magni-X reconnaissance drone. In its statement to BIRN, however, Elbit wrote: “Elbit holds no ownership stake in, nor is it a partner in, any UAV manufacturing facility in the country [Serbia].” Serbian government plane’s Tel Aviv trips According to data from ADS-B, a specialised flight-tracking website, an aircraft registered as YU-SRB 4C4A21 and used by the Serbian government, flew between Belgrade and Tel Aviv on the day of the factory opening and several days before. Around 8 a.m. on September 14, it took off from Belgrade and landed in Tel Aviv at around 11.42 a.m. It was already back in Belgrade by around 3 p.m. The same plane repeated the route on September 17, the day of the factory opening, taking off from Belgrade at roughly 1:53 p.m., landing in Tel Aviv around 5.25 p.m., and touching down in Belgrade again at around 10.43 p.m. Vucic was gushing about the Lanius-X, saying it “literally has eyes and ears, chases the target, waits for the target in an ambush”. “You simply can’t defend yourself against it,” he said. Autonomous and AI-powered, a Washington Post story in 2022 quoted experts as warning the drone represented a “nightmare scenario”. Lanius comes from the Latin for ‘butcher’. Last year, a report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese mentioned Elbit as one of the companies behind the drones, hexacopters and quadcopters that she said had become “omnipresent killing machines in the skies of Gaza”. Undeterred, Serbian arms cooperation with Israel has boomed over the last three years. The value of ammunition and weapons exports from Serbia to Israel has increased as much as 42-fold since 2023, reaching 114 million euros by the end of last year, despite numerous appeals from UN experts to halt the sale of military equipment to Israel. In April this year, the Serbian parliament adopted a security agreement on classified data between Serbia and Israel in the defence sector. The urgency of its implementation, as stated in the document obtained by BIRN, stemmed from the expected delivery of military equipment from Israel to the Serbian army. Early last year, Elbit sold Serbia advanced PULS artillery systems and Hermes 900 unmanned combat drones worth a total of $335 million. In August, another contract was signed, worth $1.6 billion, covering the delivery of drones, long-range missiles, electronic warfare systems, and a range of other military equipment to Serbia. BIRN previously also reported that the Belgrade-based company Edepro, which describes itself as “a regional leader in propulsion system solutions” for rockets, drones and missiles, exported military goods to IMI Systems, a company owned by Elbit since 2018.