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| Africa Subsaharan | ||
| German engineer pleads guilty in So Africa to nuclear smuggling | ||
| 2007-09-11 | ||
| A German engineer was sentenced to three years house arrest by a South African court Tuesday after pleading guilty to involvement in a nuclear smuggling ring headed by the father of the Pakistani nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Gerhard Wisser, 68, was sentenced to three years house arrest and a suspended jail term of 18 years in the Pretoria High Court after pleading guilty to seven charges of contravening the Non- Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act, the Nuclear Energy Act and to two charges of forgery. The trial of his co-accused, Swiss engineer Daniel Geiges, who is seriously ill with cancer, was postponed to September 21.
The two men were arrested after police discovered part of an uranium enrichment plant in a raid on a Johannesburg factory in September 2004. The find blew the lid on the South African link in a nuclear smuggling network headed by the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. As part of a plea bargain, Wisser, the former managing director of Johannesburg-based Krisch Engineering, consented to the seizure of millions of euros in his overseas assets. Wisser has also agreed to co-operate with South African and overseas authorities in investigating other alleged members of the global nuclear smuggling ring. A German court last year ordered a retrial in the case against another German engineer suspected of playing a key role in the network, Gotthard Lerch, after accusing the authorities of withholding documents. Khan admitted to selling Pakistani nuclear technology and is now under house arrest in Pakistan.
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| Posted by:lotp |
| #3 |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2007-09-11 14:31 |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Gabby Cussworth 2007-09-11 12:21 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: sinse 2007-09-11 08:08 |