Man charged with smuggling nuclear triggers to Pakistan ordered released

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http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/1132725p-7885053c.html

By MATT KELLEY, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) - An Israeli businessman accused of smuggling nuclear weapon triggers to Pakistan can be released while he awaits trial, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Prosecutors had asked that Asher Karni be held without bail. But U.S. District Court Chief Judge Thomas Hogan allowed him to be released under strict conditions, with Karni agreeing to waive his immunity from extradition from Israel or South Africa, to pay a $100,000 bond and to be electronically monitored while he stays in Maryland.
Federal agents arrested Karni, 50, on New Year's Day when he arrived for a ski vacation in Colorado. The businessman from South Africa is accused of engineering the transfer of detonation devices called triggered spark gaps to Pakistan.

The triggers can be used to set off nuclear weapons but also to break up kidney stones. Court documents say Karni tried to buy 200 of the devices from a Massachusetts maker to send to Pakistan even after the company told him the deal would require a U.S. export license. Exporting spark gaps to Pakistan without a license is illegal.

A federal magistrate in Denver had ordered Karni released on $75,000 bail raised by friends in Cape Town, South Africa, as long as he stayed with a rabbi in Maryland. The government appealed the order to Hogan, who is overseeing the criminal case against Karni filed in Washington in December and unsealed after his arrest.

Court records say Karni used a series of front companies and misleading shipping documents to buy the devices from a Massachusetts company, have them sent through New Jersey to South Africa, then on to the United Arab Emirates and later to Pakistan. What Karni didn't know, a federal officer said in an affidavit, was that authorities had intervened and had the manufacturer sabotage the devices so they couldn't be used.

What ever happened to trying to stop the spread of WMD?

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1. "Whatever happened to trying to stop the spread of WMD?"

Rove blew the intelligence network working on that when he exposed Valerie Plame's cover.

That's what happened to it.

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2. well it looks like the intelligence worked out alright on this case.

It just seems a little odd thats all. I mean, if this guy was named Mohamed and did the same thing, would we even know his name? Or wouldn't he be rotting in Guantanamo? I know we'd here a HUGE uproar if some Muslim guy doing this was released. Shit they won't even let Padilla talk to a lawyer and all he did was take a trip to Pakistan.