Thursday - November 29, 2007

Men Arrested for Selling Enriched Uranium and Trying to Buy a Dirty Bomb 

Two news stories from Europe that might keep you up at night. 

Police in Slovakia and Hungary arrested a "group" trying to sell a 1/2 kilogram amount of weapons grade uranium. 

On Wednesday the Slovak police had also said the contraband was a full kilogram (2.2 pounds) of a "highly dangerous radioactive material," but on Thursday they amended the information to say it was just under half a kilogram of enriched uranium in powder form.

"It was possible to use it in various ways for terrorist attacks," said First Slovak Police Vice President Michal Kopcik.

The uranium originated from an ex-Soviet republic, he said, without going into detail, and police weren't sure yet who was trying to buy it.

Kopcik said the 481.4 grams of powder had been stashed in unspecified containers, and that investigators determined it had a 98.6 percent uranium-235 content. "Weapons-grade" uranium contains at least 85 percent uranium-235.

Experts say about 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium or plutonium is needed to fashion a crude nuclear device. But a fraction of that would be enough, they say, for a "dirty bomb," which could use conventional explosives to scatter radioactive debris and spread panic.

A spokesman for the Slovak police, Martin Korch, said on Wednesday, "Three people have been taken into custody, two in Slovakia one in Hungary," and added that Slovak and Hungarian police had worked on the case for months. Read more....

And in London, police arrested four men for trying to buy a dirty bomb on the behalf of a Saudi Arabian man.

ANTI-TERRORIST police have arrested four men suspected of trying to buy material for a radiological “dirty” bomb. Three men were arrested at a hotel in north London, while a fourth was arrested at his home nearby.

It has been reported that the men — one of whom was from Goa, India, another from Somalia and a third from Mozambique — were middlemen acting for a Saudi Arabian.

The men were arrested on Friday after a tip-off from reporters at the News of the World. The suspects claimed to the reporters that their client was willing to pay £300,000 for a kilogram of radioactive “red mercury”.

“It’ll be for use here in the UK or the USA,” the reporters were told.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said the men had been arrested under the Terrorism Act, adding: “All four men have been taken into custody at a central London police station for further questioning. Several addresses have been searched. Some searches continue.”  Read more....

Author: The Machiavellian
Technorati Tags: Uranium Dirty bomb
Technorati Cosmos:
Technorati Watchlist:
Add this entry to: