GERMANY: Nuclear ploy?
01 September 1994
On 10 August German customs official seized a quantity of plutonium 239 in Munich amidst strong suggestions that it had originated in Russia. It was called "the biggest-ever plutonium find in Germany, and probably in the world". Bavarian state police who ran the "sting" operation seized the material from couriers (two Spaniards and a Colombian) who arrived on a Lufthansa flight from Moscow. Undercover agents had asked suspected nuclear dealers to supply samples of their wares. However critics asked why the Russian authorities were not notified before the flight took off.
The actual substances seized were 300 grams of mixed-oxide fuel, a blend of natural (non-bomb) uranium and plutonium that powers civilian reactors. Four earlier police finds of plutonium and uranium in Germany turned out to be six grams of one and less than one gram of the other. In no case was anything like the materials necessary to manufacture an nuclear bomb found. A German expert told Newsweek: "The European market consists almost exclusively of undercover policemen". A senior official of the opposition Social Democratic Party accused the government of staging election stunts and said: "There is serious suspicion that these most poisonous of poisons were brought into Germany with the help of German authorities". Mr Bernd Schmidbauer, the coordinator of the secret services, said the accusations were "absurd".
The Association of Medical People Against Nuclear War (IPPNW) denounced members of the Bavarian office of criminal investigation for the unauthorised use of radioactive substances. The substances seized in the Munich "sting" were allegedly destined for Pakistan or Iraq underlining the suspicion that it was all arranged by the police themselves as it makes no sense to pass from Russia through Germany to deliver something to these countries.
The Interior Minister of Rhineland Palatinate, Mr Zuber (SPD), claimed that in this Land there had been 20 cases, between 1992 and the middle of 1994, where alleged nuclear material was offered for sale. But these figures include only two cases of confiscation of real radioactive substances (natural uranium). The rest, like all seven this year, have been cases of fraud.
Officials of other EU governments said there was no evidence of an organised "Russian mafia" trading in nuclear material and that aggressive undercover "sting" operations intended to ensnare nuclear smugglers had created an artificial demand.
Sddeutsche Zeitung 26.8.94 & 1.9.94; International Herald Tribune 24 26 27 29.8.94; 1.9.94; CILIP Berlin.