Dutchman linked to N-bomb father faces court

6 May 2004

AMSTERDAM — Dutch businessman Henk Slebos — an associate of the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan — is to appear in court in Haarlem on 13 May on charges relating to the illegal export of chemicals.

Prosecutors claim the 20kg of chemicals — allegedly shipped to Pakistan from 1999 to 2002 — could be used in several ways, including in the making of mustard gas or ball bearings.

Another man and two companies are also being prosecuted, news agency ANP has reported. It is not clear if this case has any connection with Qadeer Khan who led the team of scientists which developed and tested Pakistan’s first nuclear bomb in 1998.

Last February Khan admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Khan and Slebos were in university together in the Netherlands, and have been in contact with each other since then, Dutch newspaper NRC has claimed.

The Dutch secret service AIVD confirmed it is investigating how Dutch technology from the Urenco consortium — based in the eastern Dutch city of Almelo — was passed onto Libya, Iran and North Korea in the 1970s.

Khan worked with a Dutch company called Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory (FDO) from 1972-75. The company conducted research for Urenco, which was set up by the British, Dutch and German governments to provide equipment to enrich uranium.

India detonated its first nuclear device in 1974 and it is widely assumed that part of the Pakistan project to develop its own bomb is based on the academic knowledge Khan gleaned in the Netherlands.

Subject: Dutch news