Dutch national sabotaged nuclear facility in Iran: Report

By Selman Aksunger

AMSTERDAM (AA) – A man who worked for Dutch intelligence in 2005 sabotaged an Iranian nuclear facility without the knowledge of the Dutch government, a media report said Monday.

Dutch national Erik van Sabben was recruited in 2005 by the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), the daily Volkskrant revealed.

Van Sabben, whose spouse is Iranian, infiltrated a nuclear facility in the city of Natanz in 2007 and installed Stuxnet spyware, aiming to shorten the centrifuges' lives and make them unusable in the long term.

He was working as an engineer at a transport company in Dubai at the time and returned there after the mission in Iran. He died in a motorcycle accident in 2009.

Van Sabben was "used" by the US and Israel, and Dutch politicians were not informed about the situation, the report said.

Only a group of political party leaders knew about the operation, but the coalition government led by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was not informed, it added.

*Writing by Nur Asena Erturk in Ankara