What do you guys think about this US defence source report?
Al-Qaida may be trying to acquire nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials in Russia through local organized crime gangs, The Washington Times reported Tuesday, citing a U.S. defense source.
“I can’t tell you here that I have evidence that they made use of them. I know they are working on them: The documentation is there,” a senior U.S. defense official told the newspaper when asked about al-Qaida attempts to obtain nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
The official, who was not identifed, said al-Qaida has made several inquiries about obtaining weapons of mass destruction on the Russian black market.
Several recent intelligence reports have also indicated that al-Qaida has considered buying nuclear weapons and materials from Russian gangsters, The Washington Times said. The newspaper said the Federal Security Service once suspected that Sergei Bakhvalov, a leading specialist in extracting plutonium, might have been killed by terrorists who tried to obtain nuclear technologies or equipment from him.
Argumenty i Fakty reported in September that the FSB and Interior Ministry studied such a scenario after Bakhvalov’s death in August but did not attribute the information to either agency. Prosecutors told Interfax at the time that they suspected the killing was linked to Bakhvalov’s business activities. Bakhvalov ran the Kristall scientific research center, which handled a $400,000 contract to supply the Chelyabinsk region with nonferrous metals, Interfax said.
The FSB could not immediately comment about The Washington Times’ report Tuesday.
The Defense Ministry responded by saying security has been tripled at the country’s nuclear arsenals. “Embezzlement or the leak of nuclear weapons from our facilities is impossible,” the ministry’s nuclear security chief, Igor Volynkin, was quoted by Interfax as saying. The ministry has said that suspected terrorists examined the security perimeters at its nuclear facilities twice last year to no avail.
However, while taking pains to secure the country’s nuclear arms, the authorities have done less to ensure security at civil nuclear facilities. As a result, at least a dozen cases of theft of HEU and weapons-grade plutonium have been reported in Russia since 1992.
Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, said it was very unlikely that any terrorist organization has gotten hold of a Russian nuclear warhead. A more likely scenario is that terrorists could have obtained enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb by buying small amounts on the black market, he said. But al-Qaida and other terrorist groups probably lack the expertise to build a bomb, he said.