Czech police arrest men selling radioactive substance

Paraphrased by:
Steve Waldrop
November 20, 2003

After a week of intensive police surveillance two Slovakian men were arrested by Czech undercover police for trying to sell them nearly seven pounds of radioactive.

The potential uses of the substance remained unclear pending an investigation, with experts differing on whether it could possibly be used in a dirty bomb.

The men were arrested at a hotel in Brno,the second largest city in the Czech Republic as they counted the $700,000 they believed they had received for the sale.

Experts from the Czech nuclear safety office, said the first checks of four parcels containing the substance, detected traces of thorium and uranium and could not have been used for the production of nuclear weapons. In all probability the materials came from the former Soviet Union.

This case was the largest seizure of radioactive material anywhere in the world in the past nine months.