- Cape Town businessman Asher Karni imported high-tech
triggers from the United States supposedly to be used in "lithotripter"
machines to break up kidney stones at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in
Soweto.
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- Instead he diverted them to a Pakistani businessman,
to be used to detonate nuclear bombs in Pakistan's controversial nuclear
weapons programme, US agents charge.
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- Israeli-born Karni, 50, is now in Washington DC facing
charges under America's tough laws restricting the export of "dual-use"
items, like the "triggered spark gaps" which can be used both
for civilian and military purposes. He could face up to 10 years in prison
if convicted.
-
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- United States prosecutors allege he also tried to buy
other military technology for the Pakistanis, including oscilloscopes,
which can be used in missiles and nuclear weapons, and the infra-red sensors
that arms manufacturer Lockheed-Martins uses in its fighter jets.
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- They also suspect Karni has diverted other military technology
to Pakistan, including nuclear weapons technology, forming part of an international
network supplying the country with the means to build nuclear bombs.
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- US department of justice officials are now in South Africa
working with the South African Police Service to search for other possible
illegal transactions in the network. The US this week also exposed a Malaysian
link in the network.
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- The US agents suspect Karni might also have sold nuclear
weapons technology to India, Pakistan's great rival, which has also built
nuclear bombs.
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- In US law dual-use items such as the triggered spark
gaps may only be exported to certain restricted countries such as Pakistan
with an export licence from the US government. No permission was required
to export them to South Africa, since it is not considered to be a country
at risk of developing nuclear weapons. But exporters are obliged to state
the end-user of the products and may not re-export them without a licence
which specifies the end-user.
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- The US department of commerce's Office of Export Enforcement
charges that Karni "willfully violated" US export controls by
"devising and implementing a scheme to divert shipments of triggered
spark gaps to Pakistan through South Africa so as to avoid the requirement
of first obtaining an export licence from the department of commerce."
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- In August last year Karni, through his company, Top-Cape
Technology of Green Point, Cape Town, placed an order through a US agent
- Zeki Bilmen of Giza Technologies of Secaucus, New Jersey, for 200 triggered
spark gaps manufactured by Perkin Elmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Massachusetts.
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- The US authorities were tipped off by an informer and
began investigating. Their suspicions were corroborated when Perkin Elmer
told them that such a large order for triggers could only be for military
purposes as hospitals only ever need, at most, five or six triggers. Before
Elmer Perkins dispatched the first batch of 66 triggers to Giza in October
last year, US agents persuaded him to disable the triggers and then began
tracking them.
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- Giza exported them to Cape Town, falsely listing them
as electrical splices and couplings for switching. The triggers were delivered
to Top-Cape on October 8 last year. From there Top-Cape re-exported them
- listed as scientific equipment - on October 19 via Dubai to the AJKMC
Lithography Aid Society in Islamabad, Pakistan.
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- The US agents discovered this mainly through a search
of Top-Cape's offices in Green Point on December 11, which the SAPS conducted
for them. On December 19 US Magistrate Judge Facciola formally charged
Karni with violating the US export control laws and issued a warrant for
his arrest. Karni was arrested when he arrived at Denver International
Airport on January 1 for a skiing holiday with his family. Karni's profit
for the entire sale of 200 triggers would have been $80 000 (about R520
000), the charge sheet says.
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- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=15&art_id=ct200
40215095700596N236444&set_id=1
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