A Malaysian company controlled by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is being investigated for possibly supplying machine parts bound for Libya's nuclear weapons programs, the national police chief said.
Inspector General of Police Mohamed Bakri Omar said Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn Bhd, or SCOPE, a subsidiary of Scomi Group Bhd, built centrifuge components that international intelligence agencies say were headed for Libya late last year.
The revelations are part of widening international investigations into the trafficking of technology by Pakistani scientists to Libya, Iran and North Korea, which have uncovered a complex black market to help aspiring powers acquire nuclear weapons.
Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium for a variety of purposes, including weapons production. They are also used in many other industries for non-nuclear purposes.
Malaysian Special Branch police began the investigation after the CIA and Britain's MI6 informed them last November that boxes of machine parts bearing SCOPE's name were found in five containers seized in a ship off Italy last October headed for Libya, police said in a statement yesterday.
Scomi is a mid-sized oil and gas company controlled by Kamaluddin Abdullah, the only son of the prime minister, which supplies specialized tools for the oil and gas, automotive and general components industries.
Mohamed Bakri said the foreign intelligence services had informed Malaysian authorities that a Sri Lankan identified as B.S.A. Tahir had acted as a middleman in the centrifuge deal.
"Tahir and SCOPE are cooperating fully with the police in the investigations," Mohamed Bakri said, adding that Tahir was not being detained.
In a separate statement, Scomi said it had been contracted by Tahir to make "14 semi-finished components" for a Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries. The company said Gulf Technical never identified its intended use of the components.
The deal was worth 13 million ringgit (US$3.4 million) and comprised four consignments that were shipped between December 2002 and August last year, the company said. SCOPE accepted the offer and built a factory outside Kuala Lumpur to fill the Dubai order.
Mohamed Bakri said "Tahir had offered a contract to SCOPE to prepare the components which was said to be a legitimate transaction."
Malaysia, a fast-developing, mostly Muslim country, is a signatory to international nuclear weapons nonproliferation treaties. It has a small government-backed program to develop nuclear technology for medical and industrial uses.
Stressing that the Malaysian-made equipment was parts only, Mohamed Bakri said "investigations carried out so far indicate that no company in Malaysia is capable of producing a complete centrifuge unit because it requires high technology and extensive expertise in the field of nuclear weapons."
The parts seized in the Libya shipment could also be used in petrochemical, water treatment and health applications such as molecular biology for protein separation, he said.
Bakri said that a "detailed investigation is continuing" in cooperation with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and pledged that it would be transparent.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Near the entrance to the Panama Canal, a monument to China’s contributions to the interoceanic waterway was torn down on Saturday night by order of local authorities. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made threats in the past few months to retake control of the canal, claiming Beijing has too much influence in its operations. In a surprising move that has been criticized by leaders in Panama and China, the mayor’s office of the locality of Arraijan ordered the demolition of the monument built in 2004 to symbolize friendship between the countries. The mayor’s office said in
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
RSS