China denies Pelindaba secrets theft
Government dismissed break-in at nuclear research centre as ‘random’. Peter Fabricius reports Spy cables prove Israel’s out to crush us, claims BDS SA
CHINA has strongly denied it was responsible for a violent breakin and theft at South Africa’s Pelindaba Nuclear Research Centre near Pretoria in 2007.
According to one of the many top secret State Security Agency (SSA) reports leaked to the media network Al Jazeera, China’s aim was to steal technology to gain advantage in a new kind of nuclear power generation.
“It is suspected that the thefts and break-ins that took place at Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) were to advance China’s rival project called chinergy,” the SSA report said in December 2009.
“As is currently, China has developed and is now one year ahead of PBMR project, though they started several years after PBMR.”
Two groups of armed men cut through a fence surrounding the nuclear facility, disabled alarms and shot a man who interrupted them.
At the time of the break-ins, the South African government and nuclear officials dismissed them as “a piece of random criminality” and a simple “burglary attempt”.
The SSA report this week is the first indication that Pretoria suspected China – now its close ally in the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Forum – was behind the break-ins. It does not explain how it reached that conclusion.
However, it says China moved ahead after that to develop its own version of the same technology which South Africa abandoned in 2010, citing a lack of investor interest. Nuclear scientists also questioned the PBMR technology.
But yesterday Pan Peng, spokesman for the China embassy in Pretoria, said, “The allegation is a complete fabrication and ridiculous.”
Meanwhile, the secret documents “reveal a torrent of politicised requests to South Africa’s SSA for information on “rogue NGOs”, politicians and exiled groups from intelligence agencies around the world – many of them declined as inappropriate by the South Africans,” Al Jazeera said. They include:
An application from South Korea for a “specific security assessment” of Greenpeace director Kumi Naidoo, a South African citizen;
A request from Cameroon to spy on an opposition leader just weeks before elections;
An attempt by Rwanda to list “genocide fugitives” and “negationists” as targets for surveillance;
A deal with Zimbabwe to spy on “rogue NGOs” whose activities were “aimed at subverting constitutional order,” including think tanks and the media, including social networks.
Continuous demands from Sri Lanka for South Africa to spy on Tamil diaspora groups, with Colombo making ongoing, unconfirmed allegations that separatists had run military training camps in South Africa since 1998.
Al Jazeera said one secret document from 2010 exposed how, nine months before the G20 Summit in Seoul in November, South Korea requested “specific security assessments” on three men.
Two were listed as “dangerous persons” and were arrested in Pakistan in 2004.
The third was director of Greenpeace, the South African Kumi Naidoo.
It is not recorded within the documents whether or not South Africa complied with the request from South Korea. Its embassy in Pretoria could not be reached for comment.
The “spy cables”, as Al Jazeera is calling them, also reveal how Cameroon asked South Africa to spy on prominent opposition leader Pierre Mila Assoute just weeks before a presidential election he hoped to contest in 2011.
An SSA agent wrote in September 2011 that Cameroonian intelligence had asked the SSA “to confirm or refute if Mr Assoute had been in South Africa recently and the purpose of the visit if it could be established.”
The liaison officer declined, noting, “I do not think Mr Pierre Mila Assoute has committed any offence which will warrant South Africa to provide information”.
The spy cables also include an intelligence sharing MoU between South Africa and Zimbabwe. It outlines a number of areas in which the two nations could co-operate in intelligence gathering, including monitoring “activities aimed at subverting constitutional order”.
A list of subheadings outline the types of organisations that Zimbabwe and South Africa agreed to target, such as “rogue” non-governmental organisations or NGOs, including “think-tanks” and “not-forprofit trusts”.
South Africa and Zimbabwe agreed to monitor media groups, “including social media” and to share their findings. However, the cables published so far have not revealed if any of this surveillance happened. THE Jewish community will continue to work closely with the South African government security services, its chairman said this week.
Mary Kluk of the Jewish Board of Deputies sent out a statement to Jewish South Africans on Thursday, following revelations of the spy cables.
“The SAJBD and CSO (South Africa Jewish Community Security Organisation) continues to work very closely with the government security services, which are committed to doing everything that needs to be done to ensure the safety of our community. The CSO also continues to work very closely with our shuls, schools and other communal organisations to upgrade their security.”
Her statement warned Jewish South Africans to be vigilant and aware of their safety and read, in part: “This past week has seen progressive revelations in the media concerning the leaked State Security Agency cables. A number of these relate directly to our Jewish community, including information regarding an envisioned terrorist attack against a Jewish installation in Cape Town in 2010.
“Reference is also made to possible attacks against our community in September last year. The SAJBD and CSO were aware of this at the time, and as a result… arranged for there to be extra security in place during that period.”
The South African chapter of the international Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions movement (BDS SA) has denounced the leaks and declared they prove that Israel is determined to crush the organisation.
“BDS South Africa believes that the recent leak, with details of Israeli cyber terrorism, shows the desperation of the Israeli government and its supporters,” said BDS SA leader Muhammed Desai.
“To resort to cyber terrorist tactics in an attempt to manipulate the South African government and by extension us, its people, should be deplored by all peace and justice loving people.
“Reports that Israeli Mossad spies were to launch a cyber attack on our financial sector due to the SA government’s support for the BDS is appalling.”
Manipulation
Desai said the movement’s South African chapter “shares the general shock of most South Africans who feel that the leaking of top secret government documents and the content of some of the documents is concerning, and we unequivocally condemn it, even though some portions reflect positively on the gains BDS has made in this country”.
Desai said although media sources had asked whether BDS SA suspect the Israelis may have leaked the tapes to indicate the strong links between their secret service and that of South Africa, “We are trying to avoid entering into these conversations.
“At the end of the day it is Mossad and the Israelis who operate in those sorts of environments, ‘spooking’ us. We prefer to operate in the open.”
However, said Desai, his organisation believed the tapes to be authentic.