The head of a South African engineering company was charged with trafficking nuclear-related materials that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction.
Johan Meyer, 53, made a brief appearance Friday at Vanderbijlpark Magistrates Court on charges of violating South Africa's Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and Nuclear Energy Act. He was not asked to plead and was remanded in custody pending a bail hearing on Sept. 8.
Details were sketchy. But the US Embassy in Pretoria said Meyer's arrest was linked to international investigations into the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program who admitted in February to passing nuclear technology to other countries.
According to the charge sheet, Meyer is accused of illegally importing, manufacturing and exporting materials between Nov. 21, 2000 and Nov. 30, 2001 that "could contribute to the design, development, manufacture, deployment, maintenance or use of weapons of mass destruction."
The document cites a lathe manufactured by the Spanish-based company Denn, for which Meyer allegedly did not have the necessary permit from the South African Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The document also says Meyer, who was arrested Thursday, was illegally in possession of material and equipment for use in gas centrifuges, used to enrich uranium, between 2000 and September 2004.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys declined to provide details of the allegations.
But Meyer's lawyer, Heinrich Badenhorst, told the South African Press Association that his client is accused of manufacturing banned items at his engineering company in this largely industrial area, about 90km southeast of Johannesburg.
"At this stage, we deny it," Badenhorst was quoted as saying.
Abdul Minty, chairman of the South African Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, said the arrest follows an investigation into a number of companies and individuals in cooperation with other countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"There has been a recovery of items alleged to have been used in the contraventions," he said in the brief statement issued late Thursday.
The US Embassy said South African government agencies "worked long and hard with various partners to monitor sensitive materials that were integral to the AQ Khan network's efforts to supply Libya's clandestine nuclear program." Libya went public about its weapons programs in December and pledged to scrap them.
"South Africa's decisive action adds vital information to the worldwide investigation into the network's reach and sends the right signal to proliferators everywhere," the Embassy said in a statement.
Embassy officials declined to elaborate.
South Africa started a nuclear-weapons program in the 1970s as a deterrent against neighboring states opposed to apartheid and Cold War instability that was fueling the war in nearby Angola. Two decades later, it voluntarily dismantled the program, winning praise from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Since then, South Africa has followed a strict policy of disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Minty said in the statement. A South Africa-based Israeli businessman, Asher Karni, was arrested in Denver on New Year's Day and accused of using front companies and falsified documents to buy nuclear bomb triggers in the US for shipment to Pakistan.
A South Africa-based suspect, identified only as Gerhard W., was arrested in Germany in August and accused of acting as a middleman in a 2001 request to provide pipes to Libya for use in a uranium enrichment facility. A company in South Africa manufactured the pipes, but they apparently were not delivered to Libya, prosecutors there said. It was not immediately clear whether Meyer's arrest was linked to either case.
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