A STUTTGART court jailed a German engineer on Tuesday for two and a half years for illegally assisting Libya in building a chemical weapons plant. The court found the 59-year-old engineer, Roland Franz Berger, guilty of violating international sanctions levelled at Libya by the United Nations as well as chapters of German foreign commerce law. Berger had been involved in the delivery and installation of equipment for a Libyan chemical weapons plant and admitted his guilt in court, which met the prosecution’s sentencing request. The prosecution said Berger knew that the plant would assist in the production of poison gas and other chemical weapons. In addition to the prison sentence, Berger will have to forfeit 200,000 Swiss francs in income earned in Libya. The equipment for the plant was supplied by an Indian company in Bombay and Berger observed the construction of the plant by Indian engineers in 1994. The prosecutor’s office could not say whether the equipment installed at the plant in Rabta, Libya had ever been in operation. – AFP