CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Scientist and Aide Get Prison Sentences

Describing the case as an example of greed rather than “cloak-and-dagger espionage,” a judge in Sacramento sentenced a former rocket scientist and an accomplice to prison for attempting to export restricted rocket material to Egypt. U.S. District Judge Raul Ramirez ordered Abdelkader Helmy, 41, who once worked for Aerojet Solid Propulsion Co., to serve 46 months in a minimum-security prison and fined him $358,690. Helmy’s co-defendant, James Huffman, 47, an aerospace marketing agent from Lexington, Ohio, was sentenced to 41 months in prison and fined $7,500. Both men pleaded guilty. In June, 1988, U.S. Customs agents seized 420 pounds of carbon fabric used in rocket cones and nozzles as it was being loaded aboard an Egyptian military transport at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport.