Henk Slebos, European partner of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear network passes away

Henk Slebos, key figure in Pakistan's nuclear network, passed away, leaving behind a legacy of clandestine trade and secrets.

Henk Slebos, one of the major contributors to Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear network that subsequently came to be known as AQ Khan network has passed away, confirmed his close friend and Dutch investigative journalist Marcel van Silfhout. Slebos joined Technische Hogeschool (TU Delft) in 1964. A brilliant student from the beginning, Slebos soon shifted to metallurgy. While studying metallurgy, Slebos met fellow student Abdul Qadeer Khan who had come from Pakistan with the memories of post-Partition violence and displacement as he originally hailed from Bhopal.

After graduating in 1969, Slebos got an assignment with the Royal Netherlands Navy where his task included mending frigates, minehunters, and submarines. At the same time he was drawn into procuring titanium tubes for submarine exhaust systems and researched underwater welding. It was while working with the navy that he came into contact with Explosive Metal Working Holland (EMWH), a company that specialized in producing steel and other materials used in explosives and he joined the company in 1974 as a commercial director. “You worked legally with fireworks and I found that fascinating,” he once told to the investigative journalismprogram Zembla where Van Silfhout worked at that time. Silfhout had gained rare access to Slebos in the year 2005 when he for thé first time accepted to be interviewed after the AQ Khan network hit media headlines because of investigation carried out by CIA’s counter-proliferation specialist Richard Barlow.

By the late 1980s, Slebos had carried out clandestine trade with Pakistan for more than a decade. Slebos was a natural charmer and he used this skill with all his business partners.

In 1976 Slebos started his own company Slebos Research which happened soon after he renewed his friendship with AQ Khan who was then working for the British-German-Dutch consortium Urenco. Khan had to flee to Pakistanin 1975 after being caught copying secret uranium enrichment processes and even the blueprint of the newest ultracentrifuge models from Urenco labs. Soon thereafter Slebos flew to Pakistan to meet his friend AQ and the two together created a highly lucrative trade in strategic goods in Pakistan which was then recovering from the defeat of 1971 and had received petro dollar support from rich Gulf Arab countries. Slebos started supplying “not the fissile material or enriched uranium, but rather the screws and bolts necessary for the secret ultracentrifuge project to succeed,” said Van Silfhout. Slebos played a role in giving access to ingredients that were essential to building the nuclear weapon by Pakistan but he never referred to his work as “smuggling” and described his work as “helping” . Supported by Slebos, Khan managed to buy steel tubes that could be used for both centrifuges and missiles – from Ukraine which was then part of the Soviet Union.

Authorities in Europe took note though as Van Silfhout says there was no punitive action for sometime. However, AQ Khan was convicted in absentia for espionage in 1983 and Slebos too was sentenced in 1985 to one year in prison for exporting a range of items including a broadband oscilloscope to Pakistan. By the end of the decade, it was reported that Pakistan had managed to build its first nuclear weapon and sought parity with India. Subsequently, it was revealed that Slebos had also exported pressure gauges, O-rings, triethanolamine (TEA) and graphite to Pakistan without a license. His company was fined € 100,000 and he had to serve time in a prison.

Slebos passed away on February 23 and with his passing, secrets of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear smuggling network that operated during the years of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Zia-ul-Haq are mostly lost. Earlier AQ Khan passed away. Van Silfhout says that Slebos had his unique geopolitical philosophy and that he believed, “Either no one should have nuclear weapons, or everyone should.” Henk Slebos will be remembered as the Dutch business partner of Dr. A Q Khan without whose help, Pakistan could not have developed its nuclear weapon. Henk Slebos’ work had a long term impact as during the 1990s Pakistani nuclear secrets travelled as far as North Korea and Iran.