Thread: COLUMBIA - SOUTH AMERICA URANIUM BUST WHAT IS GOING ON

First of all, Univision does not check their facts very well before they run stories. We've seen a lot of stories on Univision that were blatantly false.

Secondly, depleted uranium is not much of a threat. Someone could make armor piercing bullets out of it and that is about it.

W

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArt ... RANIUM.xml

IS THIS IT?


Colombians caught trying to sell uranium in Bogota
Thu Mar 2, 2006 3:13 AM GMT
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BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian authorities have seized 29.7 pounds (13.5 kg) of uranium from two people trying to secretly sell the radioactive metal to the highest bidder, the army said on Wednesday.

Soldiers and police confiscated the uranium in the gritty Siete de Agosto neighbourhood of the capital, Bogota, on February 24, Brig. Gen. Gustavo Matamoros said, speaking on radio and in a news release.

He gave no more details about the uranium and did not say whether it would be suitable for making weapons or indicate whether the attempted sale may have been linked to Colombia's Marxist rebels or far-right paramilitaries.

Western governments have long feared that militant groups might obtain materials for weapons of mass destruction on the black market.

A man and a woman were arrested in the raid, an army spokeswoman said. She was not sure if they were still in custody and local television reported they had been set free because possession of uranium is not specifically forbidden by any Colombian law.

"We are trying to establish where this material came from and where it was headed," Matamoros said in the news release.

Colombia, a close ally of the United States, is locked in a four-decade-old insurgent war in which Marxist rebels are trying to overthrow the state and thousands of people are killed every year. The conflict is complicated by illegal far-right paramilitaries who oppose the rebels. Both outlaw groups are heavily involved in the cocaine trade.

In January, Colombian officials arrested 19 members of a gang with links to Islamic militant groups Hamas and al Qaeda that forged passports for travel in the United States and Europe, according to the attorney general's office.

That works for me. It sounds like what Tar Heel was talking about.

It just might be. Well, I'm not gonna panic over it and start typing in capital letters. LOL

:P Thank you Butter-bean This was what i was looking for . Not CRITICTS ON TYPING, SPEELING OR PANIC. Just help from a site I've read for months .

Tar_Heel, sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. Normally capital letters mean anger or panic. That was all I meant.

I'm glad the article was found.

No problem JuniusJnr. This is my first ever post and felt the story needed to be discussed.

It's good that people share these kind of t hings, Tar-heel. It is hard for one person to monitor all the news these days, That is for sure.

Welcome to ALIPAC Tar-Heel. The article does not say depleted uranium and that is bad news. If it is not depleted uranium and if it is not uranium ore then that's some bad news in a box!

The authorities know where that processed uranium came from I'm sure.

All the more reason to SECURE OUR BORDERS NOW!

W

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N0211736.htm

Uranium seized in Colombia not weapons grade
03 Mar 2006 00:47:07 GMT

Source: Reuters

(Recasts with suspects)

By Jason Webb

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 2 (Reuters) - Uranium seized by Colombian authorities investigating possible trafficking could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, according to officials on Thursday, and two suspects said they did not realize the metal was uranium and were not trying to sell it.

Soldiers and police arrested a man and a woman in an industrial neighborhood of the capital Bogota on Feb. 24 and seized 29.7 pounds (13.5 kg) of uranium sitting on a lead base beneath polystyrene foam containers full of water and ice, according to a news release by the Attorney General's office.

Intelligence indicated the suspects, who have been released from custody but are still under investigation, were trying to sell the uranium to the highest bidder and might have tried to contact a rebel group fighting the Colombian government, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office said.

But the two suspects, who face up to six years in jail if found guilty of trafficking radioactive material, appeared on Colombian television to plead their innocence.

Javier Francisco Sanchez, a mining businessman, told RCN television that he had received the uranium from a scrap metal merchant who salvaged it from a ship and wanted help to find out what it was. Sanchez said he made no attempt to sell the uranium.

"We're showing our faces to demonstrate that we're not the sort of people the media says we are," said the middle-aged Sanchez, dressed in a suit, "We want to clear this situation up."

A preliminary investigation by the Mining Ministry indicated the uranium was depleted, the spokeswoman said.

While depleted uranium has some military and industrial uses, it is not particularly dangerous, according to Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

"You cannot make a nuclear weapon out of this. You can't use it for a dirty bomb," Cirincione told Reuters, adding that there have been instances in which criminals have tried to con groups like al Qaeda into buying depleted uranium.

"You could handle this stuff, you could hold it in your hand," Cirincione said.

The spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office said the two might have tried to contact the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC.