The secrecy that surrounded South Africa’s apartheid nuclear weapons programme threatens to envelop the trial in Pretoria of a German and a Swiss engineer accused of using their know-how from the apartheid era to further Libya’s atomic ambitions.
Gerhard Wisser (67), the German owner of Johannesburg-based Krisch Engineering, and Daniel Geiges (69), a Swiss former Krisch employee, are accused of attempting to smuggle nuclear equipment to Libya for its nuclear weapons programme that ended in 2003, a few months before they were arrested in Johannesburg.
The case has sparked media controversy in South Africa because prosecutors in the case have applied for a largely secret trial and a media ban on the proceedings.
This secrecy raises questions over how South Africa is confronting its own nuclear activities during the apartheid era that ended in 1990, critics say. The media ban was due to be decided on Wednesday.
”The move is portrayed as vital to prevent the dissemination of information that would allow rogue states to develop nuclear weapons, but the blackout seems as much designed to protect the dirty secrets of South Africa’s nuclear past as to stop future proliferation,” the Mail & Guardian reported last week.
Parts supplied
Wisser has admitted that Krisch Engineering, the company he set up after his arrival in Johannesburg in 1966, supplied parts to South Africa’s state Uranium Enrichment Corporation (Ucor) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of them imported from a German company, Leybold Heraeus.
Parts of the uranium enriched by Ucor at its secret Pelindaba facility (Zulu for ”no more talking”) were used by the apartheid state at its commercial Koeberg nuclear power plant, and the rest in the manufacture of six-and-a-half nuclear weapons, which were ultimately dismantled in the early 1990s.
While admitting his role in South Africa’s secret nuclear activities, Wisser insists that he did not know he was brokering a deal to supply components for Libya’s nuclear programme when he was asked by a German contact to find a South African manufacturer for a ”compact pipework system”.
The pipework system was eventually produced by South African company Tradefin, according to plans provided by a close aide to Pakistan-based Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb currently under house arrest himself for avowedly selling nuclear secrets.
The name Khan did not trigger any alarm bells with him, Wisser said, adding he believed until mid-2003 that the equipment was planned for commercial use. He also claims that it would not have worked, as key parts were never delivered.
South African prosecutors, however, argue that the equipment was related to the production of highly enriched uranium and its conversion to uranium metal for the production of nuclear weapons in Libya, the M&G reported.
Closed chambers
The sensitive nature of the evidence involved was also the reason why the case should be heard in closed chambers, the prosecution was reported as saying by South African media.
Otherwise, the evidence could be used for a further proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, the prosecutors said in their application to ban media coverage of the case against Wisser and Geiges, according to the M&G.
When contacted, the National Prosecuting Authority did not confirm the exact charges against Wisser and Geiges.
The prosecution’s application reportedly also quotes police fears that sources from the United States Energy Department and from South Africa’s nuclear research body, the Nuclear Energy Cooperation who helped the investigation might be targeted, or even recruited, by terrorists.
But the M&G and media rights groups, who are challenging the ban, have expressed concerns that the state is also attempting to keep under wraps elements of its own past nuclear ambitions.
”The M&G, together with other interested parties, is taking legal advice on opposing the blackout. Trials behind closed doors are generally regarded as inimical to justice, though certain evidence may be heard in camera or otherwise embargoed,” the newspaper said.
The Weekender newspaper suspected also British and American intelligence involvement in the case.
”The blackout seems as much designed to protect the dirty secrets of South Africa’s nuclear past as to stop future proliferation,” the M&G reported.
Wisser and Geiges — who is ill with cancer — face jail terms up to 15 years if convicted under the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and the Nuclear Energy Act. The men, who are currently under house arrest in the Johannesburg area, are due to go on trial in Pretoria’s High Court in July.
The prosecution’s application for a media ban and secret trial was due to be heard on Wednesday.