A director of a Vanderbijlpark engineering company arrested for allegedly breaking laws on the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction will remain in custody until his bail application next Wednesday.
Johan Andries Muller Meyer, dressed in a dark blue suit, said nothing during his brief appearance in the Vanderbijlpark Regional Court on Friday, and was led back to the holding cells immediately afterwards.
He faces three charges. The first is the alleged importing of controlled goods that could ”lead to the development, manufacture, deployment, maintenance or use of weapons of mass destruction without permission from the South African Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction”, between November 2000 and November 2001.
That charge under the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act relates to a Denn model RL400/2 lathe.
The second charge under the Nuclear Energy Act is for allegedly possessing ”plants for the sepemtion of isotopes of uranium and equipment … for gas centrifuges”.
Meyer is alleged not to have had written permission from the minister of minerals and energy for this for the period 2000 to September 1 2004.
The third charge, also under the Nuclear Energy Act, is that he manufactured, obtained or used the items mentioned in the second charge without written permission from the minister.
The state was represented by Anton Ackermann of the National Prosecuting Authority.
Shortly before Meyer’s appearance, his attorney, Heinrich Badenhorst, said Meyer was alleged to have been manufacturing the items at his engineering works.
Badenhorst said he had no further details of the case but ”at this stage we deny it”.
According to a statement released by the South African Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the arrest was made as part of an investigation under the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and the Nuclear Energy Act.
The council also said it had seized items allegedly used in the ”contraventions”.
During the investigation, South African authorities had cooperated with their counterparts in other countries as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the council said.
Only about 1% of the uranium found in nature contains the fissile isotope uranium 235, used for making bombs. For this purpose it has to be ”enriched”. Uranium is fed in gaseous form into centrifuges and spun until the gas richer in the fissile U-235 can be separated from the non-fissile U-238.
Denn USA is an American company that manufactures ”rotary metal forming equipment”. Some of their high-technology lathes — which could presumably be used to turn the centrifuge — are big machines, taller than an average man. — Sapa