Word: scheersberg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...uranium? And how did they get it? After several weeks of investigation by a team of correspondents, TIME has learned that the Scheersberg As voyage from Antwerp was part of a complex plot concocted by Israeli intelligence agents. Its purpose: to disguise a secret Israeli purchase of much-needed uranium for its French-built nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert; an overt purchase might have pushed the Soviet Union into supplying nuclear arms to the Arab states. The Scheersberg A, which is still in service as a tramp steamer under the name Kerkyra, was secretly owned...
...Hijacking. Investigators for the European Community began looking for the missing uranium several months after the Scheersberg A showed up empty at Iskenderun. They developed evidence that the cargo had not vanished in a hijacking: the uranium was shipped by a firm that knew it would never arrive at its destination in Italy. The firm was a now-defunct German petrochemical company called Asmara Chemie, and it had purchased the uranium-which was mined in what is now Zaire-from the Belgian mineral firm Societe Generale des Minerals. Asmara Chemie had no previous record of buying uranium...
After Biscayne Traders bought the Scheersberg A, in September 1968, the first of many new crews came aboard. But in Rotterdam, on Nov. 15, a Biscayne Traders representative falsely told the crew-composed largely of Spaniards-that they were no longer needed because the ship had been sold again. On the next day, the uranium was loaded in Antwerp, and a hand-picked crew of Israelis boarded the ship for its mysterious voyage...
Only those aboard know precisely what happened during the 15 days after the Scheersberg A left Antwerp. The ship's officers cannot be traced because they had forged passports and false identities. But one of TIME'S sources talked with a former Israeli crew member in 1973, in the Ivory Coast. According to the sailor, after leaving Antwerp the Scheersberg A sailed straight for the waters between Cyprus and Iskenderun. Without breaking radio silence, it made a rendezvous at night with an Israeli ship that carried a special winch. As two Israeli gunboats hovered near the freighters...
Arrived Empty. Port records confirm that the Scheersberg A arrived empty on Dec. 2. Three days later, most of the Spanish crew who had been dismissed in Rotterdam on Nov. 15 were called back to the ship at Palermo. Curious about its recent travels, some crewmen looked for the ship's log. They found that the pages for the previous 21/2 weeks had been ripped...