German prosecutors stated Saturday they had began investigations of two men suspected of violating German export laws by supplying equipment to a Libyan factory believed to produce chemical weapons.
The former director and a technician at a company based in the northern German city of Celle are suspected of having sold in the year 1999 water filtration equipment used in the production of chemicals to the Rabta pharmaceutical factory, said Luneburg prosecutor Juergen Wigger.
For their part, Western intelligence services have alleged that the factory, situated some 65 kilometers southeast of Tripoli, is producing poison gas.
The German firm did not receive permission to sell the equipment to the Rabta factory, said Wigger, and had listed another factory as the destination on its export application. A pharmaceutical firm in Tripoli was listed as the end-user of the water filtration equipment, the German weekly Der Spiegel reports in its Monday edition.
The Tripoli factory was inspected at the time by German diplomats to ensure the equipment would not be used in the production of chemical weapons, however the equipment was diverted to Rabta without informing German authorities.
German engineer Roland Franz Berger was sentenced in June 2001 to over two years in jail for violating the United Nations embargo on Libya by selling equipment to the Rabta facility. Businessman Hans-Joachim Rose received in 1996 a four-year prison term in the same case. (Albawaba.com)
