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...

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...