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Spain seizes valves bound for Iran's nuclear program: ministry

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1 of 5. Seized highly corrosion-resistant valves are seen in an unknown location in this handout picture provided by the Spanish police January 11, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Spanish Police/Handout

MADRID | Fri Jan 11, 2013 5:11pm EST

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police arrested two men and seized the contents of a truck bound for Iran loaded with materials destined for use in the Islamic state's nuclear program, the Interior Ministry said on Friday.

The truck, intercepted on a motorway in northern Spain early on Wednesday, was carrying highly corrosion-resistant valves, the ministry said in a statement.

Police were examining computer databases and documents at Fluval Spain, the company where the two arrested men worked, a ministry spokesman said.

"The company, registered in the Basque Country, used false companies in the United Arab Emirates for the deliveries, channeling cash through banks in other countries," the ministry statement said.

The company had commercial links with Iranian firms that featured on lists drawn up by the European Union as having connections with Tehran's nuclear program, the ministry said.

No-one at the company could be reached for comment.

The European Union has banned the sale of such material to Iran, which denies Western accusations it is seeking to develop a capability to make nuclear weapons. Tehran says its atomic program is for civilian energy purposes.

World powers are searching for a diplomatic solution to a decade-old standoff over the nuclear program to avert the threat of a Middle East war.

(Reporting By Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Pravin Char)
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Comments (2)
JamVee wrote:
They should give these folks 20 years in prison. The deterrent factor of the harsh sentencing would curtail the majority of this activity in the future. The tiny wrist slap fines and sentences that have been handed out to date, actually encourage these criminal acts.

Jan 11, 2013 5:38pm EST  --  Report as abuse
xcanada2 wrote:
I’d say it was the persons who have set up these preemptive sanctions against Iran who are the criminals. These sanctions are an attack on the Iranian people. They don’t even have much effect on the Iranian government, and in any case there real aim seems only to be to make Iran kowtow to the West.

The whole sanctions effort is a hugely undemocratic move by the West, and its Israeli shills.

Sanctions by the leading nuclear weapons powers of the world, against Iran which has been declared clean of nuclear weapons development by US and Israeli intelligence agencies: What a crock!

Send the sanctions perpetrators to Guantanamo.

I would have expected something better from Spain. Who is running that country anyway?

Jan 11, 2013 8:41pm EST  --  Report as abuse
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