Free Republic

GENEVA (AP) — A Swiss man suspected of being involved in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring claims he supplied the CIA with information that led to the breakup of the black market nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In a documentary airing Thursday on Swiss TV station SF1, Urs Tinner says he tipped off U.S. intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program. The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The 43-year-old Tinner...

Smugglers Had Design For Advanced Warhead By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 15, 2008; A01 An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups. The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic...

The government ordered the destruction of documents on an alleged international nuclear smuggling network involving three Swiss engineers, it has been confirmed. The head of a parliamentary control committee said the material was shredded last November. The father and sons – Friedrich, Marco and Urs Tinner - are suspected of helping to supply parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programme between 2001 and 2003 through a trafficking ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Reports say the three worked as undercover agents for the United States intelligence service. There is widespread media speculation that Washington asked...

BERN, Switzerland - Prosecutors on Wednesday opened an investigation into two Swiss citizens suspected of illegally exporting nuclear-bomb-making technology to Libya, a spokesman for the prosecutors office said. The spokesman, Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, declined to identify the suspects. But one investigative source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one was Swiss engineer Urs Tinner, who was arrested in Germany last week. The Swiss agency that polices adherence to international sanctions disclosed in February that it had opened an investigation to determine whether Tinner had broken Swiss law by making precision parts in Malaysia that were destined for Libya. He is...

ISLAMABAD : US leading daily New Yark Times report on Friday that selling of atomic secrets and equipment around the world began from Europe and not Islamabad. Its Paris correspondent, Craig S. Smith quote documents and experts who monitor proliferation says that the court record shows that industry, scientists and Western intelligence agencies had known for decades that nuclear technology was pouring out of Europe despite national export control efforts to contain it. It says many of the names that have turned up among list of suppliers and middlemen, who fed equipment, material and knowledge to nuclear programmes to the...

March 1 issue - Did Abdul Qadeer Khan, the notorious Pakistani nuclear proliferator, get help from a prominent Swiss family? Investigators have been unraveling the maze of connections that allowed Khan to supply the budding nuclear-weapons programs of rogue states like Iraq and Libya. Police in Malaysia allege that members of the Tinner family of St. Gallen canton were involved in a recent scheme to set up a factory for making nuclear-bomb production equipment for Libya.