Friday, February 6, 2009

Pakistani court frees A.Q. Khan

As U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke prepares to depart for Pakistan, Afghanistan and India next week; a court in Pakistan freed Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan today, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program. Dr. Khan, who was placed under house arrest in 2004 has been called the "world's leading black market dealer in nuclear technology". Watch AP Video.

3 comments:

Zeeshan Suhail said...

Call me a lunatic or conspiracy theorist, but I think he was forced into making the confession that eventually "disgraced" him. There are countless profiteers from these underhanded deals. AQK had too much going for him to mess it up like this. I suspect some serious sneakiness...

DFazio said...

I'm happy to report you are neither Zeeshan, but A.Q. Khan can be directly linked to nuclear technology sales that passed through Indonesia and Dubai to Libya, North Korea and Iran. At the same time, I readily admit he is regarded as a hero in Pakistan and his work was officially supported by the government. Atomic technology has been a national priority for Pakistan since India tested a bomb in '74, and in 1976 P.M Bhutto established a direct line of reporting from Khan to the Prime Minister's office. We can probably assume he took the fall for a large orchestrated black market in nuclear technology, but it is still big news that a court has set him free.

Zeeshan Suhail said...

Yeah, I agree and am familiar with all the facts you present, but most of all, with the point you make about how he took the hit for all that happened. As you rightly mention, the institutionalization of the nuclear research - for power or weapons - goes back decades. Frankly, his "house arrest" was a sham too, because as with most similar scenarios, he was fairly free for man presumably "under arrest".