Asher Karni
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Asher Karni (b 1954) is an Hungarian-born Israeli citizen and South African businessman. Karni originally came to Cape Town, South Africa in the mid-1980's to work for Bnei Akiva, a Jewish Zionist youth movement. He remained in Cape Town and began work as a salesman, selling and buying electronic devices for a local electronics company.
In early 2004, Karni was accused by the United States of being part of a conspiracy to sell stolen nuclear material. He was arrested while on holiday with his family in Denver, Colorado. A judge ordered Karni released on US$100,000 bail to Silver Spring, Maryland, having agreed to wave diplomatic immunity and wear an electronic surveillance device, but the US has moved to have that ruling overturned. Karni is now imprisoned in FCI Fort Dix, New Jersey.
Karni is accused of selling 200 triggered spark gaps to Humayun Khan, a Pakistani man believed connected to a larger terrorist group in Jammu and Kashmir. The nuclear black market is believed to be very tightly knit, and to have been headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, who now sits accused by the IAEA and Pakistan having sold nuclear materal to Iran and Korea for nearly two decades.
On Thursday, August 4, 2005 Karni was sentenced to three years in prison for the sale of restricted equipment to companies in India and Pakistan. His defense team requested eighteen months, while the maximum sentence is nine years. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Urbina told Karni that although he now believes Karni's deeds might have been done innocently, the longer than requested sentence was to "send a message", and that Karni's cooperation kept it from being longer. [1]
