A German businessman was on Thursday sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for illegally supplying Pakistan with equipment to build nuclear weapons.
Rainer V, 61, was found guilty by a Munich court on a range of charges, including providing false information to the German authorities in order to obtain the necessary authorisation to supply "dual use" equipment to Pakistani companies.
Prosecutors said that from 1999 until 2004, Rainer V's Munich-based company, Vacom GmbH, bought pumps, special ventilators and other equipment to be used for enriching uranium and shipped it to Pakistan in violation of German laws governing foreign trade and weapons restrictions.
Experts told the court that the equipment, worth around 400,000 euros (470,000 dollars), could have been used to produce nuclear weapons. Judge Wolf-Stefan Wiegand told the accused he had acted dangerously because "while Pakistan currently has a relatively moderate leadership, who knows what will come next."