Arguing that it is acting in the interest of national security, the government has taken the unusual step of blocking access of key documents from the court and ordered for them to be destroyed.

Parliament has also stood up against the decision, saying that the government's refusal is an act of interference which violates the Swiss constitution.

On Thursday, cantonal police armed with a court order raided the Federal Criminal Police offices in Bern, seizing a safe containing the key to the secret documents.

The government on Friday dismissed the court order as having "no effect," and said the decision to destroy the "most dangerous" documents in its possession "is absolute."

The papers are meant to be submitted in court as evidence in the so-called Tinner case relating to two brothers and their father who have been accused of helping Libya develop a nuclear weapons programme.

The Tinners were also alleged to have been in contact with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and kingpin of a network supplying nuclear technology to rogue states.

Some reports have however claimed that the family of engineers was in fact recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to help thwart attempts by Libya and Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and that Swiss and US authorities colluded after they were arrested.

The Swiss government revealed last year that it had destroyed some documents seized from the Tinners, sparking outrage at home.

According to a New York Times report in October, the real reason for the Swiss government's move to conceal the documents was pressure from the US spy agency, which feared its ties with the engineers would be exposed.

When the authorites revealed in December that there were more case documents that were to be destroyed, a parliamentary commission sought to have them preserved.

But the government vowed early July that it would destroy the remaining documents, saying that the parliamentary commission did not have the "competence... to issue such orders.

"From the point of view of security policies, it is imperative that the most sensitive documents, which detail the making of nuclear weapons, are destroyed," it added.

"There are no grounds ... to reverse its decision, which takes into account in a measured manner the needs of the prosecuting authorities and Switzerland's international engagements," the government said in a statement.

Following the court's extraordinary move to seize the safe this week, the government said all texts related to the manufacture of nuclear weapons would be destroyed.

"There is no appeal against this type of decision of the Federal Council. The decision is absolute," said the government in a statement, adding that the federal judge's order has therefore "no effect."

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