ABSTRACT
Just after midnight on May 29, 1999, alert Bulgarian border security guards stopped Urskan Hanifi, a Turkish national, as he attempted to enter Bulgaria from Turkey. Tipped off by his suspicious behavior, the guards searched Mr. Hanifi’s car and discovered a bill of lading written in Cyrillic for a quantity of “99.99% uranium-235,” and a 2.5-kg metallic Pb container (Figure 20.1) hidden inside a portable air compressor in the trunk of the car. Inside the Pb pig was a glass ampoule filled with several grams of a fine black powder (Figure 20.2) that scientists from the Bulgarian National Academy of Science later confirmed to be highly enriched uranium (HEU). Mr. Hanifi told police that he had purchased the U in Moldova for sale to a client in Turkey. When the sale fell through, Mr. Hanifi was forced to return to Moldova with the U and was subsequently interdicted and arrested.
