BONN, July 21: A German businessman has been convicted for illegally exporting nuclear weapons equipment to Pakistan and sentenced to three years and nine months imprisonment and fined 240,000 US Dollar.The conviction and sentence of 68-year old Ernst Piffl was handed over by the judge in the 11th criminal division of the Stuttgart High Court.Piffl, who was charged with the violation of the German Foreign Trade Act, faced trial to establish whether or not his illegal supplies to Pakistan between 1988 and 1993 helped that country become a ``nuclear power''. Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in the end of May.Piffl has reportedly denied the charges saying he had no idea about nuclear technology. The businessman had explained that this was an approval-free third country business and that the equipment was meant only for the sugar or textile industry.The businessman supplied equipment related to aluminium semi-finished products, gyroscope systems and spindles even as the public prosecutor in the casetold the court during the trial that the ``credibility of German foreign policy was endangered'' through the supplies of the nuclear technology related equipment.Piffl, who made it from a tool apprentice to become a millionaire had allegedly sent 31 `frequency transformers' to Rawalpindi by air in 1976 on the ``orders'' of the Pakistani embassy in Bonn.The `frequency transformers' costing about two million Marks had been reportedly ordered by a ``camouflaged'' procuring organisation of the Pakistani nuclear authorities and that the transformers were part and parcel of high speed gear of ultracentrifugal engines-components of bomb machine.There had been a spate of reports in the German media after Pakistanis nuclear tests commenting that Islamabad could not exploded the bomb without the help of illegal supplies of sophisticated technology from Germany.
