shoshana kordova

By Shoshana Kordova and Sara Leibovich-Dar

(This article was reported by Shoshana Kordova and Sara Leibovich-Dar. It was written by Shoshana Kordova.)

To American prosecutors, his name represents one more link in the complex chain by which weapons of mass destruction land in the clutches of potential Islamic terrorists eager to wreak devastation on what they consider the Western devil and the Zionist enemy. To his friends, Asher Karni is an affable, charitable and honest paragon of the religious Zionist establishment who served as a major in the Israel Defense Forces, moved from Israel to Cape Town with his family as a Bnei Akiva emissary and stayed on for 18 years as businessman and spiritual leader.

The United States government accuses Karni, who was raised in Israel, of using front companies and falsified documents to try to send 200 triggered spark gaps - electronic devices that can be used both for breaking up kidney stones and detonating nuclear weapons - to Pakistan without the necessary export license. Karni, who has been selling electronic devices for military use for about 15 years, denies knowing that the devices had nuclear capabilities. Recent court records indicate that Karni worked secretly to supply India with weapons as well, with several e-mails to and from Karni indicating that he appeared to be aware that he would be using misleading shipping documents.

Karni was arrested as he arrived with his wife and youngest daughter in Denver, Colorado, on New Year’s Day for a ski vacation. Karni, 50, has since been transferred to a Maryland jail, where he is awaiting a grand jury decision about whether to indict him. The criminal complaint against Karni says his profit for the entire sale of 200 triggers would have been $89,400, which is worth about 590,040 South African rands at the current exchange rate.

The charges against Karni have been rendered particularly relevant in recent weeks, as the United States pressures Pakistan to shut down its black-market nuclear network. Following an admission by the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, that he transferred nuclear information to Iran, Libya and North Korea, Iran has admitted it bought nuclear components on the black market. Meanwhile, Malaysian police are investigating the trafficking of nuclear components to Libya, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has determined that Libya is working on wiping out all traces of two decades of work on its nuclear arms program.

The orphan from Bnei Brak

Asher Karni was born 50 years ago in a small city in Hungary, near the Slovakian border. In 1957, Karni, his older sister Bracha and their parents moved to Ashkelon and then to Bnei Brak. He was 10 when his father died suddenly, and 16 when his mother got run over by a car as she was crossing the street outside the Kfar Haroeh Yeshiva, the boarding high school he attended. From then on, Karni was known at the yeshiva - which is affiliated with the Bnei Akiva religious Zionist youth movement - as the orphan from Bnei Brak.

Moshe Abramowitz, a farmer from Yavne’el, said his childhood friend Karni didn’t like to talk about his mother’s death. “He was very closed,” said Abramowitz. “I tried to help him, but he didn’t want people getting involved in his life. Since he was an orphan, he was a bit distant from all the others and considered unfortunate.”

But other Israeli friends of Karni’s remember him as one of the best students in the class, a good yeshiva boy who showed up to prayers early and was enthusiastic about learning Talmud - and who played a mean game of basketball. His ball-handling skills were “a few levels above everyone else,” said a family member. “That skill accompanied him and helped him from a social perspective.” For a while, Karni was even sought after by national league basketball teams, but he gave up his dream of pursuing the sport professionally when his rabbis refused to give him permission to play on Shabbat.

After Karni’s mother died, he moved to his sister’s Bnei Brak home, where she was living with her husband and their two children. Her husband, Zvi Perry, said this week that the family was dumbfounded by the allegations against Karni. “We have no idea how this happened to him,” he said. “It sounds like a Kafkaesque story. We don’t know how to take it.”

Upon completing yeshiva, Karni got a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, became a major in the IDF artillery corps - where he commanded a gun emplacement - and received an MBA from Tel Aviv University while serving in the career army. During his army service, Karni married Shuli, a kindergarten teacher from Ramat Gan. Two of their three daughters are now married and living in Israel.

Karni’s family is trying to minimize the significance of his arrest. “The Americans have been hysterical since September 11,” said one of his daughters, Inbal Edel. “He’s not the first Israeli to be arrested on false suspicions. From our perspective, it’s best if people talk about it as little as possible and don’t write about it at all.”

One of Karni’s friends from yeshiva days recalled how eager the young Karni was to live abroad. “He spoke about wanting to get out of the army and leave Israel,” said Menachem Domb, who works for Amdocs in Cyprus. “He said he had no family, nothing to tie him to Israel. He wanted to try his luck somewhere else.”

In 1985, Karni finished his army service and tried his luck as a Bnei Akiva shaliakh (emissary) in Cape Town, South Africa. While there, he initiated a program that sent 10th-grade students to learn Torah for one semester in Israel; the boys went to Karni’s alma mater, Kfar Haroeh, and the girls to Ramat Karniel Kfar Pines Ulpana. Afterward, Karni decided to stay in South Africa, where he bought and sold electronic equipment for the weapons industry at Eagle Technology and then - after being dismissed in a cloud of bitter mutual accusations in 2002 - for his own company, Top-Cape. He has also been helping to lead Cape Town’s Beit Midrash Morasha synagogue (more commonly known as the Arthur’s Road shul). Karni regularly read from the Torah, led services and taught Cape Town’s longest-running Talmud class for 15 years, community members said.

“I’ve known Asher for 18 years, and we’ve always found him to be straight, upright and reliable in every sense,” Mickey Glass, executive director of Cape Town’s Union of Orthodox Synagogues, told Haaretz late last month. “The community that he served for the past 18 years has great difficulty in believing these allegations.”

A ‘license violation’

According to court documents, Karni is accused of ordering 200 triggered spark gaps from the PerkinElmer Optoelectronics manufacturing company in Massachusetts via Giza Technologies in New Jersey last fall. However, at the request of American federal law enforcement officials, PerkinElmer disabled an initial shipment of 66 devices sent to Giza, and the triggers became part of a sting operation. The prosecution has said an anonymous source in South Africa provided it with the details of the deal.

Karni is accused of falsely reporting that the spark gaps were going to South Africa - which would not require a special export license from the U.S. - and then repackaging the spark gaps in South Africa and sending them on to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and, finally, to Islamabad, where the prosecution said the items had been requested by Humayun Khan of the Pakland PME Corporation.

The United States alleges that Karni knowingly failed to get an export license and did not accurately report the spark gaps’ ultimate destination, for which he could reportedly serve up to 10 years if convicted. The prosecution alleges: “In sum, there is probable cause to conclude that Karni has exported, attempted to export, and conspired to export triggered spark gaps from the United States to Pakistan without first obtaining an export license and with the knowledge that such an export license was required if the goods were destined for Pakistan.

“Moreover, Karni structured the transaction so as to conceal his true purpose from the American authorities. In particular, Karni designated a false end-user for placement on U.S. export documents.”

Harvey Steinberg, who represented Karni in Denver, was quoted as saying the case concerned nothing more than “a license violation.” According to Karni’s defense there, he did not know he needed a license to export the detonators. Two sources familiar with the case said Karni claims he had been informed by one of the companies involved in the deal that no export license was needed. But in the same correspondence, the company also said it did need to know the end-user, one of the sources said.

The American government maintains that a PerkinElmer representative in France wrote to Karni last year saying that exporting spark gaps to Pakistan would require a U.S. license and refusing to sell him the products without it. The prosecution said Humayun Khan urged Karni to try harder, writing in an e-mail: “I know it is difficult but that’s why we came to know each other.”

American licensing requirements are also readily available on the Internet. The U.S. Department of Commerce Web site posts the regulation that requires exporters to supply an export license for sending triggered spark gaps to Pakistan, citing “nuclear nonproliferation reasons.”

Prominent Washington lawyer Nathan Lewin, who represents Karni, refused to make any statements on the case, although he did confirm that Karni claims he “definitely” knew nothing about the triggered spark gaps’ nuclear capabilities. Karni is also being represented by Barry Boss of the Washington, D.C. firm Asbill Moffitt and Boss.

According to the prosecution, Karni has admitted that he sent the spark gaps bought by Giza to Pakistan. Herzl Kraz, a Maryland rabbi who runs the Hebrew Sheltering Home in suburban Silver Spring and who has been approved by the courts as Karni’s custodian upon his release, said Karni had told him during visits to his jail cell that he “knew the shipment was going to Pakistan, but he didn’t know it was anything illegal.” Lewin, however, said Karni had not admitted to selling spark gaps to Pakistan for medical use.

On the other hand, Kraz said Karni told him he thought the spark gaps would be used in “various hospitals,” thereby ostensibly accounting for the size of the order request. Experts say even large hospitals don’t use more than half a dozen triggered spark gaps at most, and large orders raise red flags. A court filing on Karni’s behalf includes a letter purportedly from the Pakistani user of the spark gaps, saying they had been sent to Agha Khan Foundation University and Hospitals in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. However, the prosecution said the foundation does not have any hospitals in Sri Lanka, and its hospital in Pakistan has only one kidney stone treatment (lithotripter) machine.

Although Karni has been granted bail, he has not been released as federal prosecutors continue to bring more arguments and evidence against him. The conditions of his release include $75,000 bail - which has already been provided by the South African Jewish community - and a $100,000 bond. In addition, Karni must waive his rights of extradition to South Africa and Israel, and wear an electronic monitoring anklet while in Kraz’s custody. U.S. Justice Department official Channing Phillips said Karni is not prepared to meet all the conditions of release.

Meanwhile, Karni’s wife and youngest daughter are staying in Maryland, and his daughter, 15, is attending a Jewish day school there. Karni is receiving kosher food and other religious requirements while in jail, Kraz said. This marks a change from when Karni was first arrested in Denver, where he had not been receiving kosher food or been allowed to wear a kippa, and did not have access to phylacteries or Jewish books. The issue was resolved by the Aleph Institute, an American organization that takes care of Jewish prisoners. The group was alerted to the situation by Rabbi Mendel Popack, the American-born head of the Chabad Centre of Cape Town, who flew to Denver to provide a live character reference (”we’ve known him as an honest and religious person”). Several other Jewish community leaders, many of them from South Africa, sent written references.

The emissary who stayed

Several South Africans who remember Karni from his emissary days described him as dedicated, organized, astute and approachable. Saville Stern, a former chairman of the Cape Town branch of Bnei Akiva now living in Modi’in, said Karni built up the movement by training some of the Jewish youths in the community to run it efficiently on their own, leaving behind a structure that carried Bnei Akiva through the next six to eight years. He also said Karni had hundreds of thousands of rands moving through his hands on a regular basis - funds geared toward Bnei Akiva summer camp and other programs - and that the money was always accounted for. “He did what he said and he said what he did,” said Stern.

“He was a great shaliakh,” said Dov Paritzky, the Bnei Akiva-Israel official who was in charge of Karni while he served as emissary. “He really led the community, taught Torah, served as a cantor, tutored bar mitzvah boys and got the children interested in religion in a fun way. He played basketball with them and was very charismatic.”

Bnei Akiva approved Karni’s request to stay in Cape Town one year beyond the original three-year stint, said Paritzky, but expected him to return to Israel afterward. “I sat with him in Cape Town; he never told us he was staying there. He fudged it and evaded it and delayed and delayed his return to Israel. For a long time, we had an illusion that he would return. In the end he stayed there. We didn’t like it. In Bnei Akiva, it generally doesn’t happen that an emissary doesn’t return to Israel when he finishes his allotted time. It looks bad.”

One of the primary arguments Karni’s friends raise in his defense is his connection to Israel. Karni would never knowingly sell nuclear material to Pakistan, the reasoning goes, because he knows it could endanger the Jewish state. His service in the IDF, his religiosity and affiliation with the Zionist Bnei Akiva movement, his personal attachment to the land - and two of his daughters’ residence here - have helped convince friends from the South African Jewish community of Karni’s innocence (or, at worst, stupidity), and they have put up the bail money and are helping pay for other expenses, including legal fees.

“I think he is a very Zionist person even though he didn’t live in Israel for many years,” said a friend who knows him from Cape Town. “The bottom line is that all his children were heading to Israel - I think that it was quite clear to him that one day he wanted to go [back] to Israel. I think he felt, because of his contribution to the community, at the moment it was more important to be here. He felt like maybe it’s kind of a mission.”

Undercutting the boss?

Karni had a double incentive to stay in South Africa, said Mickey Glass: Jewish community members were pressuring him to teach religious classes, and he received a business offer he couldn’t turn down.

Karni went to work at Eagle Technology, a middleman company that buys technological equipment associated with the defense industry from countries like the U.S. and Israel and sells it to South African buyers. Michael Bagraim, an attorney for Eagle, described the company this way: “If you need to shoot something or explode something and there’s electronic equipment for that, they can sell that.”

When Eagle Technology fired Karni in October 2002, the company claimed that he had been competing with his boss - selling Eagle’s clients the same military technology Eagle sells, but at a lower price and for his own profit.

Karni filed an arbitration suit for unfair dismissal, demanding more than 1 million rand (about $116,400 in 2002), said Bagraim. However, Eagle’s contentions were never proved because Karni dropped the case after several days of cross-examination. The parties settled the case with Eagle issuing a letter of apology “for any hurt feelings,” said Bagraim.

Peter Kantor, Karni’s lawyer in the dispute, called the settlement a “moral victory” and said Karni was dismissed only after sending the company several letters claiming he had not received all the commission payments due him for the previous three years. A case brought by Karni for insufficient remuneration is still pending, but is being delayed until Karni’s return to South Africa, whenever that might be.

Partial transcripts of the arbitration hearings indicate that Eagle accused Karni of making a private 300,000 rand ($34,900 at the time) deal for another company in a transaction that was supposed to have gone to Eagle. The money was then loaned to Karni for his mortgage, Eagle charges. Due to the settlement, the accusation was never proved or disproved. Kantor, who is based in Cape Town, said his client had sold technological equipment only to companies outside South Africa - with Eagle’s knowledge and consent - and had never competed with Eagle while he was still working for the company, which sells only within the country. “He consistently and totally denied any untoward dealings and competition with [Eagle],” said Kantor, calling the company’s claim “totally untrue.” Kantor said that although Karni had set up his own company - an electronics supplier for the commercial and military industries called Top-Cape Technology - 18 months before his dismissal, any domestic sales Karni made took place only after he was fired from Eagle.

The arbitration transcripts also reveal what can be interpreted as possible inconsistencies in Karni’s presentation of his financial well-being or as an indication that Karni may have wanted to live beyond his means.

When asked at the hearing whether he had said it would have been difficult for him to resign because he was in a “financial predicament” due to a “lack of resources,” Karni said yes. However, he also said he made 700,000 rand a year ($81,490 in 2002) and had recently bought a 1.5 million rand house ($174,600 at the time).

When asked to reconcile his spending with his declared financial straits, Karni said his wife wasn’t happy with the “terrible” area “with all the dirt” in which they had been living for 13 years, on Eagle Technology chief Alan Bearman’s premises. Karni said his wife had been pressuring him to move and that sometimes people reach a decision that the time has come to change their lifestyle.

Karni also admitted in the hearing to sending out a brochure to prospective clients that claimed he had resigned rather than been fired. “Due to internal politics, family-relevant matters and management policies that I don’t agree with, I have decided to go my own way,” he wrote. When asked whether the statement was a lie, he said: “You can call it a lie, a white lie.”

Responding to questions about why Karni was asking Eagle for compensation, he said, “I am not a greedy person, and the money was nothing for me.” Karni’s Top-Cape Web site states about himself, “His experience, integrity, honesty and friendliness placed him and his company as prime supplier to the local and international electronics market place.”

Indeed, the American accusations against Karni have come as a complete surprise to at least one company that has had dealings with him. “When I heard what’s going on with him now, I was in indescribable shock,” said Haim Hoppert, head of the Israel branch of Excalibur, a company that manufactures airplane equipment. “He was always straight with us.”

The sentiment is echoed by one of Karni’s friends from yeshiva, Yosef Gesner, an accountant from Petah Tikva. “As far as I remember him, he’s not one of those people who would do things like this, certainly not for greed. He wasn’t after money and capital.”

Open house

For many of Karni’s friends and acquaintances familiar with his business dispute, it has merely fueled their conviction that Karni is the victim of an elaborate set-up. They believe the anonymous South African source who tipped off the U.S. was one of Karni’s local competitors.

Karni’s friends in Cape Town enumerate his good qualities, citing them as near proof of his innocence. Indeed, if Karni ever felt a sense of abandonment as a young orphan, he seemed intent on making sure that others in his vicinity didn’t suffer the same fate. On Fridays, he would regularly drive to the local geriatric home to bring people without close relatives in South Africa to spend Shabbat in his house, said a family friend who asked to remain anonymous. Especially on Shabbat, said the friend, Karni’s “house was always open to people in need,” including “a lot of people who didn’t have family.”

Even among Karni’s positive attributes, it is money that stands out: his friends say he couldn’t stop giving it away. Generosity - along with honesty and integrity - is one of the qualities Karni’s South African friends and acquaintances mention most frequently when asked to describe him.

“We’ve always known Asher as a very straight, honest and upright person,” said one friend. “If he gives a donation to the shul [synagogue], the next day the check will be there.”

Stan Kahn, an active member of the synagogue who has worked with Karni in running it, recounted seeing Karni giving money to a poor man who appeared to rely on the regularity of his charity. “I’ve seen [Karni] every day when he came out of shul - there was a poor guy sitting and waiting there, and there wasn’t a day that he didn’t give him some money,” said Kahn. Karni also made frequent donations to the shul - when he got called up to the Torah, at birthdays, “any celebration,” said Kahn. “He was always the first to give tzedaka [charity]; he was generous.”

But when it came to the apparent source of that money - Karni’s job - he was almost entirely close-mouthed, said several community members, including those who have known him for nearly two decades.

“I’ve only known him from the shul, but he seems to be a man of high integrity,” said Rabbi Jonathan Altman, who has led the Morasha synagogue for two years. “I have no idea about his business, I have no idea about his personal life. His business activities were very separate from his synagogue involvement.”

Altman and others said people who knew Karni were shocked by the allegations against him, and that the topic has become a major focus of conversation. On the day of Karni’s first hearing in the U.S. in January, some members of the synagogue even called for a communal day of fasting and prayer on Karni’s behalf, said Altman. He said he told them they could fast if they wanted to but that he would not declare a community fast day “under these circumstances.”

At least one Cape Town resident, though, has trouble reconciling the news reports she has read about Karni with the support he’s getting from the religious Jewish community. Another said she found it strange that people are so willing to donate their money to Karni, saying they believe in him as though he were a god.

How much did Karni know?

Much of the support shown by Karni’s friends seems to rest on their conviction that while he may have technically committed a crime, such as a license violation, he remains clean on the moral count.

Asher Karni could be convicted for sending the triggered spark gaps to Pakistan without an export license regardless of whether or not he was aware of all their uses. He maintains that he did not know about the nuclear capabilities of the devices when he made the deal, attorney Lewin confirmed.

“He didn’t have the slightest idea that this had any other usage,” said Rabbi Kraz. “How was he supposed to know he was in the middle of a sting operation? At what point is a businessman supposed to ask questions?”

Indeed, representatives of three American companies that sell triggered spark gaps said separately that even a person who, like Karni, has been selling electronics for commercial and military industrial use for more than a decade, would not necessarily have any reason to suspect that spark gaps can be used to detonate nuclear devices.

“Especially in the nuclear industry, everything is kept pretty well tight-lipped,” said an application engineer at the upstate New York-based Magnavolt Technologies, which sells high-power spark gap switches, among other electronic devices. Regarding knowledge of spark gaps’ nuclear uses, he said: “It’s not common knowledge, it’s not something the public would know or electrical equipment suppliers would know. It’s usually the scientists [who know].”

However, that view is not shared by everyone in the electronics industry. The nuclear capability of triggered spark gaps is “absolutely” common knowledge within the field, an American professional familiar with the industry said on condition of anonymity. “Any switch can be used to detonate [a nuclear device]. There are all kinds of switches; spark gaps are one of them.”

Indeed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Bratt argued in court documents that Karni must have known his Pakistani contact had ties to the Pakistani military, saying Humayun Khan had asked Karni to buy infrared sensors for missiles that are used on F-16 fighter planes. While it is unclear whether the deal for the sensors went through, another deal that apparently was completed was Khan’s request for a sophisticated oscilloscope, a measuring device that can be used in nuclear weapons programs. Court records indicate that Karni was apparently planning to cover up the shipping trail. He e-mailed Giza Technologies in August to say he had a “new project,” writing: “It is very important that they will not know it is coming to S.A. [South Africa].” Prosecutors said they found the e-mails while searching a laptop computer and six computer discs Karni had with him when he was arrested.

In a telephone interview with Haaretz, Humayun Khan has confirmed that he supplies electronic equipment to the Pakistani military, among other clients, but insisted he had not been involved in the effort to smuggle the spark gaps to Pakistan, saying he could not have remained in Pakistan if he were buying nuclear components. Khan said he was having difficulty proving his innocence because a virus has deleted all the documents from his computer, according to news reports.

Khan told Haaretz he initiated contact with Karni via the Internet in July 2002, before the latter was dismissed from Eagle Technology. At the time, said Khan, he had no idea Karni was Israeli, or he wouldn’t have done business with him. After Khan saw Karni’s Top-Cape Web site, which makes reference to Karni’s studies in Israel, Khan said he cut off all ties. Khan also denied any link to an Islamic underground group in Kashmir, saying he wasn’t a radical Muslim, and didn’t even have a beard.

Khan has told The Associated Press that Karni told him he was Palestinian. Khan has said all the devices he tried to buy were for civilian companies, though American nonproliferation experts said the items also had military applications. But Khan also reportedly said he had contacted Karni to buy several pieces of American-made equipment that could not be used to make nuclear or other weapons. Indeed, Kraz said Karni told him that he had already carried out two previous business deals with his contact in Pakistan for electrical equipment and “there was no problem.”

The court documents indicating that the triggered spark gaps may be only a small portion of illegal exports in which Karni participated may make it far more difficult for Karni to plead ignorance. Court files include e-mail exchanges between Karni and an Indian businessman, Raghavendra “Ragu” Rao, who was trying secretly to buy material for two Indian rocket factories.

Rao’s e-mails from India ask Karni to get three kinds of high-tech equipment and to conceal their intended final destinations: two rocket labs (the U.S. restricts exports to this type of facility). Rao reportedly denies the charge. According to reports about the court records, an August 2002 e-mail from Rao to Karni warns Karni not to indicate that an accelerometer was being sent to one of the labs, since its export is restricted due to its “possibility of being used in guidance systems for missiles.” Rao wrote, “Be careful to avoid any reference to the customer name.”

But even if Karni is convicted, his supporters may continue to remain by his side. Kraz, the rabbi in charge of supervising Karni if he is let out of jail, complained that the post-September 11 atmosphere in America has effectively reversed the dictum of “innocent until proven guilty,” and said even a conviction could leave room for doubt. “Being convicted doesn’t always mean 100 percent guilty,” he said. “It sometimes means you fall between the technicalities, the whims of a judge.”

A South African friend of Karni’s who has been active in trying to help him since the arrest said he would not have assisted anyone he suspected had knowingly sent nuclear weapons components to Pakistan. “If I really thought he was guilty, I wouldn’t want to be helping him, and I wouldn’t be supporting him,” said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “All those of us who know Asher believe there has been a misunderstanding somewhere along the way.”

Encapsulating the attitude of several of Karni’s friends, Stan Kahn refused to consider the possibility that Karni could completely separate his business ethics from the values he has demonstrated in personal and religious life. “He was honest, he was very highly principled, and none of us can really believe that he would go into something to his detriment or to the detriment of Israel or South Africa,” said Kahn. “We cannot believe that he would be two different kinds of people.”

On the other hand, diverse motivations can come into play in cases like these. “People who do this - I’ve interviewed several such people - convince themselves that it’s not such a terrible act,” said David Albright, president and founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security. “They tell themselves, for example, that in any case the country that bought the equipment from them will not be able to actually build atomic weapons, so there’s no real problem.”

However, “the lure of money is at the heart of illicit procurement activities and is the grease that makes such deals happen,” said Albright.