Mỹ cho biết trùm tội phạm Nhật Bản buôn bán vật liệu hạt nhân từ Myanmar

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A man identified by federal prosecutors (công tố viên liên bang) as a leader of Japan’s Yakuza organized crime syndicate (tổ chức tội phạm) was charged on Wednesday with trafficking uranium and plutonium from Myanmar with the expectation that Iran would use the material to make nuclear weapons (vũ khí hạt nhân).

The man, Takeshi Ebisawa, is accused of conspiring (bị buộc tội âm mưu) with associates to sell the weapons-grade material and illegal narcotics and to buy surface-to-air missiles and other weapons on behalf of an ethnic insurgent group (nhóm nổi dậy dân tộc) in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma.

As part of the trafficking scheme (âm mưu), the indictment says, Mr. Ebisawa sent the undercover agent a list of weapons he wanted, including surface-to-air missiles and AK-47 assault rifles. He then sent the agent a picture of the leader of an ethnic insurgent group in Myanmar who is an unindicted co-conspirator (đồng phạm không bị truy tố) in the scheme, referring to the person as “No. 1.”

The negotiations between Mr. Ebisawa and the others continued into February 2022, when two of the unindicted co-conspirators met in Thailand. During the course of the meetings, one of the unindicted co-conspirators showed the undercover agent (đặc vụ ngầm) two vials with a powdery yellow material before taking the vials to an office in Bangkok for safekeeping.

In May 2022, law enforcement personnel searched the Bangkok office and found the material. A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory (phòng thí nghiệm pháp y hạt nhân) examined it and found detectable quantities of uranium, thorium and plutonium.

source: nytimes,