A former professor at NTNU in Trondheim has been charged with inviting four Iranian citizens as guest researchers without having cleared it with the institute’s management.
On Monday, the trial against him starts in the Oslo District Court. The now 49-year-old German-Iranian risks up to ten years in prison if he is found guilty.
The accused researcher invited four visiting researchers from Iran, who had stays of varying duration at NTNU between February 2018 and July 2019.
According to the indictment, the man ensured that the Iranians gained access to laboratories where, among other things, the electron microscope instrument SEM was located. According to the indictment, this could serve to develop Iran’s military capability.
International sanctions
The microscope is on a list of equipment and material that is prohibited from being exported to Iran as a result of international sanctions. It is also forbidden to give training to Iranians on how to use it.
“We have brought charges against him for breaching the sanctions regulations, including a breach of the Iran regulations, the export control regulations, and a data breach,” state attorney Frederik Ranke told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) last autumn.
The accused 49-year-old, who left NTNU in the autumn of 2020, denies criminal guilt. He currently resides in Qatar, according to the indictment.
NTNU notified the Police Security Service (PST) about the case in April 2019 after the management at the Department of Machine Technology and Production discovered a data breach.
The Oslo District Court has set aside three weeks for the processing of the case.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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Is there an accessible list somewhere of Norway’s sanctions like this?
I have found the page for military-related goods at https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/foreign-affairs/eksportkontroll/om-eksportkontroll/export-control/id2008483/
… but what about personal contacts like this? For example, I have hobby wargame friends in both China and Russia, and a (brettspiller, ikke video) game publisher of mine is Chinese.
Could personal contacts/friendships and/or publishing contracts like this ever be sanctioned?