Nuclear bomb material found for sale on Georgia black market

Exclusive: Georgia trial reveals how sting netted highly enriched uranium that had been smuggled via train inside lead-lined cigarette box.

Highly enriched uranium is on sale on the black market in Georgia, according to a trial. Photograph: Guardian

Highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia.

Two Armenians, a businessman and a physicist, have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi.