Posted on 02/21/2004 12:07:45 AM PST by Cap Huff
Malaysian police report implicates the Griffins
John Aglionby in Kuala Lumpur Saturday February 21, 2004 The Guardian
A British businessman and his son suspected of procuring blackmarket equipment to make nuclear weapons were instrumental in setting up Libya's weapons programme, the Malaysian police allege.
Peter Griffin, 68, and his son Paul, 40, from Swansea but based in Dubai and France, supplied equipment, technology and helped arranged the training of technicians "to set up a workshop in Libya to make centrifuge components which could not be obtained from outside Libya" a 17-page police report says.
It claims that they set up a front company to buy parts around the world and helped an operation to make parts in a Malaysian factory for the multinational network run by Pakistan's senior nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The report is based mainly on evidence from another of the network's middlemen, Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, and briefings by British and US intelligence agents.
President George Bush has described Mr Tahir, a Sri Lankan who lives in Malaysia, as the network's "chief financial officer and money launderer."
The report says Mr Tahir told officers that he had arranged on behalf of Mr Khan the sale of used centrifuge units to Iran in the mid-1990s, for which Mr Kahn was paid $3m (£1.63m) in cash.
Last week the Guardian published the first interview with Mr Griffin.
He said the allegations against him and his father were "total nonsense, rubbish" and "totally untrue".
Mr Griffin was unavailable for comment yesterday and no one answered the phone at Gulf Technical Industries, his company in Dubai, which arranged many of the procurement deals, according to the documents obtained by the Guardian. Peter Griffin, who has retired to France, could not be reached either.
The Malaysian police report does not link either of the Griffins to the Iranian or North Korean nuclear energy and weapons programmes.
Neither the Griffins not Mr Tahir have been accused of committing a crime.
The Griffins' involvement in Mr Khan's Libyan operation began, according to the Malaysian police, at an unspecified date after an initial meeting in 1997 between Mr Khan, Mr Tahir and a Libyan representative, Mohamad Matuq Mohamad, at which Libya asked for centrifuge units.
Their first task was described as Project Machine Shop 1001, to set up the workshop in Libya.
The police report implies that Peter Griffin was more heavily involved at this stage than his son.
He obtained the required machines from Italy and Spain and allegedly supplied the lay-out plan for the workshop.
In 2001/2 Peter Griffin reportedly supplied a lathe machine to Libya for the project and then "arranged to send seven to eight Libyan technicians to Spain, twice, to attend courses on how to operate the machine".
At the same time he is said to have supplied an Italian-made furnace to the workshop.
The Malaysian special branch conducted its investigation after British and American intelligence officers told it in November that Mr Tahir had used a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope), owned by the prime minister's son, "to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment programme".
Detectives homed in on Scope after five crates of goods bearing its labels were found on board a ship, the BBC China, in the Italian port of Taranto, bound for Libya. Agents suspected that they were to be used in the Libyan enrichment programme.
The report concludes that Scope was unwittingly duped by Mr Tahir and Mr Griffin into making what it thought were parts for the oil and gas industry .
The Malaysian police have submitted their report to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, asking it to investigate further.
Libya has not commented on the activities of the Khan network.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.