Swiss End Probe of Alleged Libya Chemical Factory

Several firms in Switzerland helped finance and equip a Libyan plant suspected of making chemical weapons but they broke no Swiss laws, the federal prosecutor’s office said Friday.

“The inquiries found no infringements of the (Swiss) war materials law,” it said, adding that several companies in Switzerland were found to be involved in financing and procuring equipment for the Rabta plant, 35 miles southwest of Tripoli. It did not identify them.

Washington says the plant is capable of producing chemical weapons, including nerve toxins.

The Swiss investigation began in January, 1989, after a U.S. tip that Ihsan Barbouti International, an Iraqi-owned engineering consulting firm with offices in Switzerland, and a Swiss subsidiary of West Germany’s Imhausen-Chemie may have been involved in the project.

The prosecutor’s office also said it established that the chemical thionyl chloride was exported to Libya in 1985, but the substance was not made subject to the war materials law until March 1, 1989. The supplier was not named.

The war materials law bans the unlicensed export of 12 chemicals commonly used in making chemical weapons, but does not bar companies from helping to build chemical plants.

Libya maintains that the Rabta factory was designed to produce pharmaceuticals.