SYDNEY (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri claims the militant Islamic organization has bought briefcase nuclear bombs on the central Asian black market, according to Osama bin Laden's biographer.
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has told an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program, to be aired on Monday night, that when he interviewed Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahri in 2001 he asked whether al Qaeda had nuclear weapons.
Mir said al-Zawahri laughed and said: "Mr Mir, if you have US$30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are available.
"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated and we purchased some suitcase bombs," Mir quoted al-Zawarhi on the ABC program "Enough Rope," recorded last Monday from Islamabad.
The Egyptian al-Zawahri, a doctor, is regarded as the brains of al Qaeda and a key figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Al Qaeda is suspected of having an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, biological or chemical, but no evidence of a program was found in searches of its bases after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Security experts say it is highly unlikely that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network have got anywhere close to acquiring nuclear weapon technology, but they do not rule it out.
Experts have long said it might be easier for al Qaeda to create a dirty bomb -- a cocktail of non-fissile material and explosives capable of creating damage -- but that would spread radioactivity over only a limited area.
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