March 5, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
In 1982, a German exporter and former Nazi, Alfred Hempel, sent 70 tons of heavy water, a component for nuclear reactors, from Sinochem in China to Dubai. The shipping labels were then changed to mask the transaction, and 60 tons of the heavy water were forwarded to India, where it enabled the government to use its energy-producing reactors to create plutonium for its atomic weapons program. The other 10 tons went to Argentina, which was interested in atomic weapons at the time.
In 1983, Mr. Hempel sent 15 tons of heavy water from Norway’s Norsk Hydro, and 6.7 tons from Techsnabexport in the Soviet Union, through the emirates to India.
In 1985 and 1986, Mr. Hempel sent 12 more tons of Soviet heavy water to India that were used to start the Dhruva reactor, devoted to making plutonium for atomic bombs. (The details of these transactions come from German and Norwegian government audits, but Mr. Hempel, who died in 1989, was never convicted of a crime.) [NYT via The Agonist] Ex-Nazi sells heavy water to India, and an Israeli sells switches to Pakistan
In 2003, over Washington’s protests, emirates customs officials allowed 66 American high-speed electrical switches, which are ideal for detonating nuclear weapons, to be sent to a Pakistani businessman with longstanding ties to the Pakistani military. American prosecutors have indicted an Israeli, Asher Karni, for allegedly exporting the switches through Giza Technologies in New Jersey to South Africa and then to Dubai.
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