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Nuclear smuggling trial in Switzerland, CIA link to be covered up

“This deal has been done to keep the CIA link out of court,”

Nuclear smugglers who aided AQ Khan face trial in Switzerland, The Guardian UK, Julian Borger,13 Dec 11 Friedrich, Urs and Marco Tinner to stand trial but their claims of CIA involvement will not be examined in plea-bargain deal. Switzerland has charged three members of the same family for their role in the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear smuggling network after a plea deal which will mean that their claims of collaboration with the CIA
will not be examined in court.

The guilty plea by Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco,
brings to an end a seven-year investigation clouded by intrigue, which
in 2007 involved the Swiss defence ministry – allegedly under heavy US
pressure – destroying vital evidence in the case, and blocking the
prosecution of the Tinners and the CIA for espionage.

On Tuesday, the Swiss attorney general announced that the Tinners had
been charged under the country’s war material act with “aiding the
illegal nuclear weapons programme of an unknown state”.

A statement from the attorney general’s office said: “From the outset,
the … enquiries indicated that the accused had links with the
network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the ‘father of the Pakistani atom bomb’,
who supplied Libya with nuclear weapons technology.”

Khan confessed in 2004 to running a network selling nuclear equipment
and know how, after one of his shipments was intercepted on the way to
Libya. Khan and his associates are also believed to have supplied Iran
and North Korea with uranium centrifuges, as well as the blueprint for
a nuclear warhead which the Tehran government said it received
unsolicited from the network.
President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan but kept him under house
arrest, refusing to allow the US or the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) to question him. He was freed by court order in 2009,
and has since recanted his confession, saying the Pakistani state had
been fully aware of his activities.

Questions remain over how much more weapons information the network
sold, and to how many customers. Experts said that those questions
will remain unanswered as a result of the Tinners’ plea deal.

The attorney-general’s statement said: “As a result of the admissions
made by the suspects, no evidence will be heard in the main
proceedings.” It added: “In addition, the court will be requested to
accept a plea bargain between the parties covering sentences, the
allocation of costs, the forfeiture of assets and other matters.”….
The claim that the Tinners’ relationship with the CIA was unclear was
met by scepticism by proliferation experts who pointed out that Urs
Tinner himself had claimed to have tipped off the US on the delivery
of centrifuge parts to Libya.

David Albright, the author of a book on the AQ Khan network, titled
Peddling Peril, said there were also surviving copies of emails
between Urs Tinner and the CIA which the Swiss government had failed
to destroy, and records of shipments of centrifuge parts by the
Tinners to a non existent front company in Chicago. “This deal has
been done to keep the CIA link out of court,” Albright
said……http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/13/nuclear-smugglers-aq-khan-switzerland?newsfeed=true

December 14, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Switzerland