Details has recently been revealed that 50-year old Oleg Khinsagov, from the Russian North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, was detained by the Georgian secret service last January when he tried to sell 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of highly enriched uranium to a Muslim buyer who he believed would pay him $1 million (approx. £500,000) - the "Muslim buyer" was in fact, an undercover agent, part of a joint sting operation mounted by Georgian and U.S. intelligence operatives.
To me though, the really worrying aspect of this affair is that nobody knows where Khinsagov got the uranium. The 100 grams was a sample. Had that deal gone through, he would had sold a much larger cache stored in his apartment back in Vladikavkaz. Khinsagov claimed he had a further four kilograms of uranium, which in the wrong hands is enough to make a small atom bomb (The A-bomb that fell on Hiroshima required 50 kilos of highly enriched uranium).
A Georgian court sentenced Khinsagov to eight-and-a-half years in prison on Thursday.
Russian caught trying to sell enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb
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