THE HAGUE, Dec 16: A Dutch court on Friday sentenced a Dutch businessman and friend of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to 12 months in prison, eight of which were suspended, for shipping equipment used for uranium enrichment to Pakistan between 1999 and 2002.

Henk Slebos, who befriended Qadeer while they were students at Delft in western Holland in the 1960s, was convicted of illegally exporting strategic goods by a court in Alkmaar.

He was also ordered to personally pay a fine of 100,000 euros (120,000 dollars) and two of his companies were fined for a total of 97,500 euros.

The prosecution had asked last month that Slebos be sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined 100,000 euros. He has not denied the shipment of equipment for uranium enrichment, but he denied the exports were illegal, saying that was a matter of opinion, in a documentary aired on Dutch public television in early November.

“The court blames the accused for breaking the rules meant to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” the court said in a press release. An accomplice of Slebos, Zoran Filipovic, was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and a 5,000-euro fine for illegally exporting strategic goods.

In 1983, Qadeer was convicted in absentia to four years in jail for stealing secrets related to uranium enrichment while working at Urenco, a Dutch enrichment facility. The verdict was overturned two years later on a technicality and the Dutch government declined to pursue the matter.

In January 2004, Qadeer admitted passing on nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, and was pardoned by President Gen Pervez Musharraf.—AFP