Five indicted for smuggling goods to help Pak’s nuclear programme
WASHINGTON:THE US has indicted five men for illegally exporting Us-origin goods to two Pakistani government agencies that are on America’s list of sanctioned entities for their ties to the country’s nuclear weapons programme, exposing Pakistan’s thriving nuclear black market.
The five men named in the indictment that was unsealed in a US court on Wednesday are residents of Pakistan, Canada, Hong Kong and the UK, and remain at large with outstanding warrants for their arrest, the US department of justice said. The indictments were handed out by a grand jury last October.
“The defendants smuggled Us-origin goods to entities that have been designated for years as threats to US national security for their ties to Pakistan’s weapons programmes,” said assistant attorney general for national security John Demers.
Their alleged actions also posed a threat to the “delicate balance of power among nations within the region”, said Jason Molina, the lead homeland security investigator, in a reference to the nuclear arsenal of India and Pakistan.
The indicted men are Muhammad Kamran Wali of Pakistan; Muhammad Ahsan Wali and Haji Wali Muhammad Sheikh of
Canada; Ashraf Khan Muhammad of Hong Kong; and Ahmed Waheed of the UK.
Using a Rawalpindi-based front company called Business World, the indicted men are alleged to have supplied 38 shipments of these goods between September 2018 and October 2019 to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), the top regulatory body, and the Advanced Engineering and Research Organization (AERO), both of whom have been on the US list of sanctioned entities since 1998.
The US prohibits the export of certain goods without permission to foreign entities that it has declared as potentially dangerous for national security reasons.
This indictment is an instance of Pakistan’s continued efforts to clandestinely and illegally build its nuclear programme, and sell to others in what has been called a “nuclear black market”, in defiance of international laws.