Malaysia's surprise arrest of a senior figure in disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear proliferation network has prompted suggestions it was done to appease the US and protect the prime minister's son from further scandal.
A US State Department spokesman said Washington was "delighted" with the arrest of Buhary Syed Abu Tahir on Friday, three months after police cleared him of breaking any Malaysian laws for arranging for a company controlled by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son to make centrifuge parts for Libya's nuclear programs.
Abdullah had earlier insisted there had been no wrongdoing and that Tahir, a Sri Lankan who holds Malaysian permanent residency, would remain free. Abdullah signed the order to arrest Tahir on Friday under a tough security law allowing for indefinite detention without trial.
Opposition leaders yesterday accused Abdullah of using the Internal Security Act instead of regular criminal laws against Tahir so he wouldn't be brought to court where details that could incriminate or embarrass Abdullah's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, might emerge.
"Abdullah must explain why Tahir was arrested after police cleared him of any wrongdoing just a few months ago," said Kamaruddin Jaafar, a senior official with the opposition Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party. "He must also explain why his son is spared from any action when in fact it is his company that produced the centrifuges."
"I worry that the arrest under the ISA is the result of a compromise between Abdullah and the US government, whereby action is taken against Tahir and in return no one else is implicated -- that the arrest is meant to silence Tahir to hide the details of his workings with the prime minister's son," Kamaruddin told reporters.
Abdullah is on an official visit to China and has not commented on Tahir's arrest.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the US was "delighted" by Tahir's arrest.
"We think his arrest is a major step and it will serve as a catalyst to international efforts to shut down the Khan network," he said.
Tahir is the most senior figure in the proliferation network headed by Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, to be arrested since he confessed in February to selling nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan after he made a public apology.
International investigators say the network stretched across five continents, exploiting loopholes in international nonproliferation treaties to provide what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei called a "nuclear supermarket."
US President George W. Bush in February called Tahir the network's "chief financial officer and money launderer."
Tahir brokered a contract for Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, to build sophisticated components between 2001 and 2003 that authorities say were for Pakistani-designed centrifuges, machines that can be used to enrich uranium for weapons and other purposes.
SCOPE says it thought the parts were for the oil and gas industry in Dubai. A Malaysian police investigation concluded the parts had more than one possible use, and cleared SCOPE of any wrongdoing.
The CIA and Britain's MI6 in October seized 25,000 SCOPE-made parts in the Mediterranean in a shipment bound for Libya, blowing the lid off Khan's network and prompting fresh investigations into Libyan and Iranian nuclear programs.
SCOPE was a subsidiary of Scomi Group, which is controlled by Kamaluddin, the prime minis-ter's son, through a private investment company, Kaspadu.
Tahir served on the board Kaspadu for some of the time the centrifuge deal was struck. Scomi and Kamaluddin have since cut all ties with Tahir, and Scomi has sold SCOPE.
Tahir, 44, who ran a computer business in Dubai, moved to Malaysia in the mid-1990s and established contacts among the country's elite. Khan attended his marriage to the daughter of a Malaysian diplomat in 1998.
Malaysian police say Tahir told them he had been acquainted with Khan since the 1980s and helped smuggle nuclear materials to Iran and Libya.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
UNCERTAIN TOLLS: Images on social media showed small protests that escalated, with reports of police shooting live rounds as polling stations were targeted Tanzania yesterday was on lockdown with a communications blackout, a day after elections turned into violent chaos with unconfirmed reports of many dead. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to solidify her position and silence criticism within her party in the virtually uncontested polls, with the main challengers either jailed or disqualified. In the run-up, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, which has seen a string of high-profile abductions that ramped up in the final days. A heavy security presence on Wednesday failed to deter hundreds protesting in economic hub Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, some
Flooding in Vietnam has killed at least 10 people this week as the water level of a major river near tourist landmarks reached a 60-year high, authorities said yesterday. Vietnam’s coastal provinces, home to UNESCO world heritage site Hoi An ancient town, have been pummeled by heavy rain since the weekend, with a record of up to 1.7m falling over 24 hours. At least 10 people have been killed, while eight others are missing, the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said. More than 128,000 houses in five central provinces have been inundated, with water 3m deep in some areas. People waded through
RSS