Word: barbouti
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Dates: during 1989-1989
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Over a period of four years, Barbouti spent two or three days a month in Libya, designing and supervising construction of the "technology center." As prime contractor and chief procurement agent, he traveled the globe recruiting expertise and labor. For Rabta he provided Japanese-designed desalinization and electrical equipment, as well as plastic molding and precision machining plants, a foundry from a Danish firm, a metal-working plant, a power station, a water-treatment facility, a maintenance workshop and three warehouses. He had plenty of money to spend; one Rabta contract, he boasted to a friend, was worth nearly...
...Barbouti's IBI had set up a network of offices stretching from Europe to Asia. In West Germany, where export-license rules have been hopelessly lax (but now, belatedly, are undergoing revision), he signed up Imhausen-Chemie as chief subcontractor for the project. Intelligence officials say Barbouti's newly opened offices in Hong Kong helped arrange a complex scheme by which material was sent to Imhausen's representative in Hong Kong and transshipped to Rabta. In this way, they explain, Barbouti managed to avoid arousing suspicions about Gaddafi's real intent...
...While Barbouti acknowledges that he was aware of the chemical plant, he says he is sure it was not designed to turn out chemical weapons. "In four years, sitting with the engineers and technical people on committees, nobody has mentioned or hinted that something secret is there," he says. In fact, he argues, one Rabta building, code-named Pharma 150 and reportedly the center for poison-gas manufacture, was not even included in his original design. "I draw the site plan myself -- my hand," declares Barbouti, adding that Pharma 150 was built sometime in 1987, after he completed his work...
Intelligence sources are more than skeptical about Barbouti's claim. They have reconnaissance photos showing that construction of Pharma 150 began at the same time as the rest of Rabta's buildings, and was "well along" by 1986, when Barbouti was still deeply involved in the project. Nor do Barbouti's protestations square with the fact that his company arranged for the supply of protective equipment for handling toxic chemicals at the plant and remained active in the project, according to one official, "well into 1988." Barbouti's case is not helped, moreover, by the fact that he shuttered...
...sure, there are no hidden tracks. If intelligence authorities want to interrogate Barbouti, they will find him in London, fingering his worry beads. It is unlikely they will discover that he broke any laws. He was, after all, a legitimate Iraqi businessman who happened to be Libya's middleman and who knew nothing about the manufacture of chemical weapons. He won't lie, but he may not want to tell the truth either...