Agence France-Presse,
JOHANNESBURG: A South African court handed a German engineer who was involved in a global nuclear technology smuggling ring an 18-year suspended jail sentence on Tuesday, the SAPA news agency reported.
Gerhard Wisser will have to spend three years under house arrest as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors which saw him admit to seven charges of contravening the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and the Nuclear Energy Act, as well as two charges of forgery.
The 68-year-old also consented to the confiscation of six million rand (600,000 euros/820,000 US dollars) in cash and the seizure of his overseas assets worth over 2.8 million euros.
He will co-operate with South African and overseas authorities in their investigations against other role players in the nuclear smuggling ring.
The trial of his co-accused, Swiss design engineer Daniel Geiges, was postponed until September 21 as he is seriously ill with cancer.
Wisser, former managing director of Johannesburg engineering company Krisch Engineering, had been accused of involvement in an international smuggling ring headed by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan aimed at supplying Pakistan and Libya with the means to manufacture nuclear arms.
According to SAPA, Wisser admitted that he had in the early 2000s caused a flow-forming machine to be imported and re-exported from South Africa; that he caused nuclear related material to be manufactured without authorisation, and that he had exported or attempted to export the material.
He also pleaded guilty to forging documents to make the exports appear lawful.
Khan was a national hero and the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, but fell from grace after he publicly confessed in February 2004 to passing nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
