Highly enriched uranium (HEU) was smuggled from Armenia to Georgia in a lead-lined cigarette packet in March. Two men involved in transporting the substance were arrested in April, report various British media.<\/p>\n
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But the details of the operation were not known until Sunday when it was disclosed that two Armenian nationals \u2014 Sumbat Tonoyan, 63, a former dairy factory owner, and Hrant Ohanyan, 59, a retired nuclear physicist from Yerevan Physics Institute \u2014 were implicated in the smuggling case. Both men have pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n
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Prosecutors said the pair had smuggled 18 grams of HEU on March 11, 2010, by train from the Armenian capital of Yerevan to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in a lead-lined cigarette box. Such a quantity was nowhere near enough to make a nuclear bomb but was meant as a “taster sample” with more HEU available if the buyer was satisfied.<\/p>\n
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They were on the way to sell their precious sample to a man of whom they knew nothing other than that he was probably a Muslim and claimed to represent “very serious people” willing to pay up to $50,000 a gram, reports The Guardian. If the sale went to plan, the two smugglers had arranged to go back to their Armenian supplier for more.<\/p>\n
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The smugglers thought they were dealing with an Islamist extremist group. In fact, they were set up by the Georgian secret service.<\/p>\n
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The trial, which is being held in camera, has underlined how little about the illicit trade in nuclear smuggling is known.<\/p>\n
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Further, the investigation has highlighted the difficulty of stopping nuclear smuggling in the region. Radiation detectors on the Georgia-Armenia border failed to identify the substance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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