Back in April, as part of a joint investigation by Mother Jones, Frontline/World and the Center for Investigative Reporting, Mark Schapiro reported on Asher Karni, a “genius” in South Africa’s military electronics trade, now in jail in Brooklyn awaiting sentence for orchestrating a nuclear black market deal. (See The Middleman.)
Schapiro recently spoke by phone with Karni’s collaborator, Humayun Khan, an Islamabad businessman with close ties to the Pakistani military. In the interview, Khan, who has been indicted by the U.S. Justice Department but remains at large in Pakistan, protests his innocence but eventually admits that all the evidence “is pointing right at me.” Listen to the phone interview at Frontline/World (where you can also read email exchanges between Karni and Khan in which the Pakistani, known as “the Guru,” asks Karni to purchase items prohibited under nonproliferation laws.) This story is developing by the week, so stay tuned.