On June 26, three international organizations – the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) – filed a criminal complaint against representatives of the Polish-based state-owned Nitro-Chem, NATO’s largest TNT producer, for alleged involvement in international crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.
In parallel, three leading Palestinian human rights organizations – Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) – as well as individual survivors of the genocide, are joining the lawsuit against Nitro-Chem. Their submissions detail the scale and magnitude of the destruction caused in Gaza.
The supply chain The indictment is largely based on the report „The Missing Ingredient: Polish TNT,” published by three research organizations—the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Shadow World Investigations (SWI), and the Movement Research Unit (MRU)—based on open-source intelligence (OSINT) data.
According to the report, Nitro-Chem is the largest supplier of TNT to NATO and the EU, as well as a key supplier to the United States (US) military. Polish officials have publicly stated that about 90% of TNT imported by the US comes from Poland. This dependency has developed because the US stopped domestic TNT production in 1986 and only decided to restart production in late 2024, with a new plant expected to be operational in 2028.
Thus, American arms manufacturers have been dependent on imports for years. The report further states that Polish TNT has become an essential ingredient in the production of large aerial bombs – particularly the Mk 80 series and the BLU-109 – as well as 155 mm artillery shells.
These munitions are powerful, wide-ranging weapons with a lethal range of several hundred metres. Artillery shells are unguided. Their use in densely populated civilian areas violates the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: distinction, proportionality and the principle of precaution in attacks. Despite this, Israel has reportedly deployed tens of thousands of these types of munitions in Gaza, including in densely populated areas.
The report documents Nitro-Chem’s central role in this supply chain. In a 2018 presentation cited in the report, General Dynamics, the US company that makes the munitions, described Nitro-Chem as „the sole certified source of TNT for US bomb programs.” The original 2016 contracts were renewed and expanded several times, even beyond October 2023, with a new agreement in April 2024, and then another contract worth approximately $310 million in April 2025.
The report estimates that between October 2023 and July 2024, the US delivered at least 14,000 Mk 84 bombs, 6,500 Mk 82 bombs, and 1,000 BLU-109 bunker busters to Israel. These numbers are likely an underestimate, given that approximately 30,000 one-ton bombs were dropped on Gaza between October 2023 and August 2024. The report also documents that Nitro-Chem has also sold explosives, including TNT and RDX, directly to Israeli arms manufacturers such as IMI, Elbit, and Rafael.
The report’s findings transformed the demands and strategy of the anti-genocide movement in Poland. Since its publication, shutting down the TNT supply chain and ending Polish complicity in the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and other international crimes have been among the main demands of the local „Embargo Teraz!” (Embargo Now!) campaign.
The denunciation Since then, a debate has erupted in Poland over whether Nitro-Chem can be held liable for selling TNT to the US, which is largely used to produce long-range munitions, including the Mk 80 series and 155mm artillery shells, which the US is likely to deliver to Israel and use against Palestinians in Gaza.
A coalition of legal organizations – HRF, FIDH and ELSC – argue that this supply chain could give rise to criminal liability.
The coalition's position is that the evidence in the report, supplemented by open-source research, supports that TNT manufactured by Nitro-Chem has been a key ingredient in the production of aerial bombs (particularly the Mk 80 series and BLU-109 bombs) and artillery shells manufactured in the US since at least 2004.
The coalition further alleges that the US subsequently provided these specific types of munitions to Israel for its military operations, particularly during its genocide against the Palestinians. In addition, documents show that Nitro-Chem also directly exported TNT and other explosives to Israel.
Given the long-term and continuous supply lines between Nitro-Chem and the US, and between the US and Israel, it is highly likely that Polish TNT was incorporated into the explosive devices that the US produced and deployed by Israeli forces during the Gaza bombing. The evidence confirms that Israel used these specific munitions to carry out systematic attacks on densely populated civilian areas – a campaign widely recognized by international bodies as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity – and thus the continued provision of critical raw materials by Nitro-Chem, whether through US channels or direct sales, could amount to complicity in the commission of serious international crimes.
Polish criminal law punishes genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity (Articles 118, 118a and 122-126 of the Criminal Code), as well as anyone who assists in such crimes.
The submission states that a professional explosives manufacturer cannot credibly claim ignorance of these risks, given that Israel’s use of US-made bombs and artillery shells against the Gazan population is a well-known fact. Moreover, Nitro-Chem’s contracts with the US arms industry were renewed and expanded even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recognized the plausible risk of genocide in January 2024.
TNT shipments continued even after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for international crimes committed in Gaza in November 2024. The shipments continued despite successive UN reports, including the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry published in September 2025, stating that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces had committed and were committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The complaint argues that the continued supply of the substance, while foreseeing and accepting these risks, may constitute complicity in the commission of international crimes. The complainants are demanding an investigation into those acting on behalf of Nitro-Chem.
The TNT loophole It is worth noting that pure TNT was removed from the licensing requirement under both EU and Polish regulations in 2021. This is despite the fact that there are no other significant TNT producers in the EU and despite the fact that a significant part of TNT produced in Poland is exported for military use without proper end-user controls. However, this legal loophole does not exempt arms manufacturers from their general obligations, nor does it exempt them from their obligations under international humanitarian law and Polish law, which both criminalize complicity in international crimes.
