Man Gets 3 Years for Sales Linked to Nuclear Arms

After hearing Karni apologize for selling blacklisted U.S. electronic components to companies in Pakistan and India, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Urbina told the former Israeli army major that no amount of contrition could make up for the potential threat posed by his actions.

"I want you to know how serious I think your conduct was," Urbina told Karni, emphasizing that he was sentencing him to a prison term longer than that requested by his defense lawyers to send a message to the public.

Citing Karni's extensive cooperation in an ongoing nuclear trafficking investigation, lawyers for the South Africa-based businessman had sought a 19-month sentence. That would have freed Karni immediately because he has been in federal custody since his arrest Jan. 1, 2004, at Denver International Airport.

Urbina shaved six years off the maximum term Karni could have received under complex federal sentencing guidelines, saying he was doing so because of Karni's cooperation.

But the judge said he was deeply troubled by Karni's central role in a conspiracy to sell U.S. high-tech components to firms in Pakistan and India that Washington believes are part of those countries' nuclear-weapons and missile programs.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jay I. Bratt told the judge that Karni sold blacklisted products to entities in Pakistan and India on at least 17 occasions, a much larger number than authorities had previously disclosed.

Bratt, a veteran prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office transnational/major crimes section, described the Karni case as perhaps the most serious threat to national security that he has encountered.

Urbina said he was most alarmed by Karni's admitted use in 2003 of a web of intermediaries to buy 200 precision electrical switches, known as triggered spark gaps, from a Massachusetts firm and then ship them to a business associate in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

At the time, Urbina said, Karni and the associate, Humayun Khan, knew that the U.S. government prohibited the sale of the components to Pakistan because of their potential use in detonating nuclear warheads. The two men went to great lengths to camouflage the end user, the judge said.