Swiss man arrested in widening Libya nuclear probe

KARLSRUHE, Germany - A Swiss man was arrested in Germany on suspicion of involvement in an international smuggling ring to supply nuclear equipment and know-how to Libya, the federal prosecutor’s office announced. The 39-year-old, identified only as Urs T., is accused of helping Libya to build nuclear centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium in order to produce atomic weapons. The German authorities said Urs T. was arrested in the western region of Hesse on Thursday. Investigators believe he advised a Malaysia-based company and oversaw the production of more than 2,000 pre-assembled centrifuge components. According to federal lawyers, the parts were shipped first to Dubai then put into at least five containers under false identification papers and loaded on to the German freight ship BBC China for shipping to Libya. However the containers were unloaded in October last year in the southern Italian port of Taranto after the ship was banned by the German government from unloading its cargo in a port outside the European Union. The containers containing the suspect components were then seized. Urs T.’s arrest is linked to the detention in South Africa last month of a Swiss engineer, Daniel Geiges, 65, and a 66-year-old German, Gerhard Wisser. They were charged with contravening nuclear energy laws and breaking a law banning the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Both men remain in custody. German authorities are investigating whether the men broke national secrecy laws. South African police are currently investigating a nuclear smuggling network thought to have ties to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who admitted in February to helping Libya and other nations develop weapons programmes. Libya announced late last year that it was abandoning attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after months of secret negotiations with London and Washington.

 

 

Indonesia prosecutors seek jail for Hambali’s brother

JAKARTA - Indonesian prosecutors on Monday urged a court to impose an eight-year jail sentence on the brother of an accused mastermind of militant violence for helping to transfer money used in a bombing in 2003. Gun Gun Rusman Gunawan, 27, is charged with aiding crimes of terror. He was detained last year in the Pakistani city of Karachi where he was a student at an Islamic university. “(We) call on the council of judges to declare the defendant legally and convincingly guilty of carrying out criminal acts outside Indonesia by giving aid, access ... and gathering funds for terror acts,” prosecutor Teuku Muzafar told the Central Jakarta court. Gunawan is the younger brother of Hambali, an Indonesia-born preacher authorities believe was Osama bin Laden’s key link to Southeast Asia. Hambali has been in US custody since his arrest in Thailand last year. Prosecutors said Gunawan had a crucial role in allowing the transfering of thousands of dollars that eventually financed the bombing of Jakarta’s JW Marriott Hotel on August 5, 2003, in which 12 people were killed. Dressed in a casual beige-coloured shirt, Gunawan, who has denied any wrongdoing, did not make any comments after the reading of the prosecutors’ demand. Indonesia has been rocked by three major bomb attacks by militants in the last two years, including the Marriott blast. The worst was the 2002 attacks on nightclubs on the holiday island of Bali which killed 202 people. The most recent bombing, outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta last month, killed nine people. More than 40 people have been tried and convicted of involvement in the Bali and and Marriott attacks, believed to be the work of the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network.

Norwegian, American win Nobel economics prize

STOCKHOLM - Norwegian Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott of the United States won the Nobel economics prize for 2004 on Monday for analysing how economic policy is shaped and what drives business cycles. “Their work has not only transformed economic research, but has also profoundly influenced the practice of economic policy in general, and monetary policy in particular,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its citation. Their research has “transformed the theory of business cycles by integrating it with the theory of economic growth”. Kydland, who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, and Prescott, who works at Arizona State University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, share the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.36 million) prize. Their 1977 research on the “time consistency problem” described how policy makers often have an effect opposite to that intended because they lack consistency -- for example, setting out to keep prices stable but in fact creating inflation. Their work helped shift the focus in policy-making to institutions rather than isolated measures. In 1982 they created a model which showed that supply-side shocks -- such as technology -- are a driving force behind the business cycle, rather than variations in demand alone. “Whereas earlier research had emphasized macroeconomic shocks on the demand side of the economy, Kydland and Prescott demonstrated that shocks on the supply side may have far-reaching effects,” said the Academy.