A Swiss leading daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reported on Sunday, January 2 that in the 1980s, the Israeli spy agency- Mossad, allegedly destroyed and threatened German and Swiss companies who helped Pakistan develop its nuclear weapons programme.
News agency The Jerusalem Post quoted NZZ as reporting that the “the suspicion that Mossad carried out the attacks and issued threats soon arose” after the three bombings in 1981 on three of these companies following an unsuccessful intervention by the United States to stop the activities”.
In the 1980s, Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran collaborated closely on creating nuclear weapons devices, with German and Swiss corporations providing “quite well researched” assistance to their nuclear programme.
The US attempted but failed, to persuade the German and Swiss governments, to crack down on the helping businesses in light of Pakistan’s “rapid efforts” to restart its nuclear weapons development
For Israel, the possibility that Pakistan could become the first Islamic State to possess an atomic bomb posed an existential threat. Suspected Mossad agents are then said to have “acted” against the corporations and engineers that assisted Pakistan.
“A few months after the unsuccessful intervention of the American state department in Bonn and Bern, unknown perpetrators carried out explosive attacks on three of these companies – on February 20, 1981, on the house of a leading employee of Cora Engineering Chur on May 18, 1981, on the factory building of the Walischmiller company in Markdorf and on November 6, 1981, on the engineering office of Heinz Mebus in Erlangen,” NZZ report stated adding that there was no other damage apart from that of properties and the death of Mebus’ dog in the three attacks.
The blasts were reportedly followed by a series of phone calls in English and broken German from strangers threatening other businesses.
“The attack on the Walischmiller company could happen to you as well” – this is how the administration office of Leybold-Heraeus was threatened, read the report.
The Swiss media report also pointed out that the organization for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, a previously unknown body that claimed credit for the explosions, was also “never heard from” after the occurrence.
According to Adrian Hänni, a contemporary historian and intelligence agency expert, Mossad’s involvement in the bombings is likely, but there is no “smoking gun” to prove it.
