Breaking Video: Three Arrested Selling Pounds Of Radioactive Material
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) - Three people have been arrested for trying to sell more than two pounds of an unspecified radioactive material, which officials then seized, police said Wednesday.
Specialists were examining the radioactive material, which the three were trying to sell for $1 million, said police spokesman Martin Korch.
Two of the suspects were arrested in eastern Slovakia, the other in Hungary, he said. They were not identified.
Slovak and Hungarian police have been working together on the case for several months, Korch said.
The Czech news agency CTK, citing unconfirmed reports, said the material was enriched uranium.
Erich Tomas, a spokesman for the Slovak Interior Ministry, said he had no information about the case, and the U.S. Embassy in Bratislava had no immediate comment.
There have been concerns that Eastern Europe could be a source for radioactive material for a so-called “dirty bomb.”
In 2003, police in the neighboring Czech Republic arrested two Slovaks in a sting operation in the city of Brno, after they allegedly sold undercover officers bars of low-enriched uranium for $715,000.
Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the U.N. nuclear watchdog would be following up on the case.
“It will be important to determine whether the material is question is nuclear,” Fleming said, adding that such incidents are tracked in an IAEA database.
Concerns about nuclear smuggling have focused on Russia and the former Soviet Union, where security at nuclear-related industries fell into disrepair after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
The U.S.-based organization Nuclear Threat Initiative said in a report last year that Russia remains the prime country of concern for contraband nuclear material.
In 2006, Georgian agents, working with CIA officials, set up a sting operation that led to the arrest of a Russian who tried to sell a small amount of weapons-grade uranium in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket.
In 1997, two men were arrested in Novosibirsk, and officials said they aimed to smuggle some 11 pounds of enriched uranium to Pakistan or China. That uranium reportedly was stolen from a plant in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.
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But, but, but the Dems say the threat is not real!
November 28th, 2007 at 11:15 amThis is what reaches the news….What doesn’t make the news would boggle your brain to the importance of this issue…
November 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pmBlackmarket and terrorism are one in the same