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Rogue scientists gave bin Laden nuclear secrets
By Toby Harnden in Washington
(Filed: 13/12/2001)
ROGUE Pakistani scientists have confessed to sharing nuclear, biological and chemical secrets with Osama bin Laden during meetings in Kabul last summer. The confessions of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, who left Pakistan's nuclear programme two years ago, provide the most convincing evidence yet that the al-Qa'eda network was gathering the technology needed to build weapons of mass destruction. The scientists, who have been held by the Pakistani intelligence authorities for the past two months, used their involvement in an Afghan relief organisation as a cover to visit Kabul, where they met bin Laden in August. They have now given details of the talks and could be charged with revealing secrets, according to officials in Islamabad. The US government has been putting pressure on Pakistan to investigate amid fears that bin Laden might have acquired enough radiological material to be combined with conventional explosives to make a "dirty bomb". A Pakistani official told the Washington Post that Mahmood and Majid met bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, his Egyptian deputy, and two other al-Qa'eda agents several times at a compound in Kabul over two or three days. They spoke "extensively" about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and bin Laden told them that he had access to radiological material acquired for him by the radical Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The scientists, who face seven years in jail if convicted of betraying nuclear secrets, said bin Laden had asked them how he could use his material to make a weapon and they had told him this would not be possible with what he had. Mahmood, an expert in uranium enrichment and plutonium production, held key jobs in each of Pakistan's three most important nuclear facilities. Majid worked for the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission. They were both forced out in 1999, partly because of concerns that they were advocating equipping other Islamic nations with enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium. Mahmood formed a relief organisation called Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (Islamic Reconstruction) purportedly dedicated to redevelopment projects in Afghanistan. At least seven members of the relief group have been detained or questioned in the Pakistani investigation, which was one of the major issues discussed during the recent visit of George Tenet, the CIA director, to Islamabad. Among the "relief workers" were a senior army officer, a third nuclear scientist, a Pakistani industrialist and a financier. The two scientists had previously said they only discussed their charity work with bin Laden but apparently changed their story when presented with evidence to the contrary. This evidence has been presented to the CIA but has not been made public. Pakistani officials said they believed that the nuclear discussions were "academic" and that neither scientist had the expertise needed to construct a weapon. Mahmood had said he met Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, several times during a long visit to Kandahar earlier in the summer. It was during this trip that Omar introduced him to bin Laden.
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