The man who made Pakistan into a nuclear power and later admitted leaking atomic secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya walked out of his home after reaching a secret deal with the government to end years of de facto house arrest.
The decision to grant freedom of movement to Abdul Qadeer Khan stirred alarm in Washington, which worries that Iran has continued to pursue nuclear arms and that Pakistan may not be able to safeguard its own arsenal in the face of rising Islamic militancy.
The White House said US President Barack Obama wanted assurances from Pakistan that Khan wasn’t involved in the activity that led to his arrest. US State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said Khan remained a “serious proliferation risk.”
Asked on Friday what the international community would think of his release, Khan was typically defiant.
“Are they happy with our God? Are they happy with our prophet? Are they happy with our leader? Never,” he said. “I don’t care about rest of the world. I care about my country. Obama cares about America, not about Pakistan or India or Afghanistan.”
Khan said he had no plans to return to the nuclear field.
Khan’s wife said her husband would remain under some restrictions, including a gag order.
While the 72-year-old scientist is a pariah in the West, he is a national hero for his pivotal role in developing the nuclear bomb for Pakistan and was lionized by Islamists for making it the world’s only Muslim nuclear power.
He was detained in December 2003, however, and admitted on television in early 2004 that he operated a network that spread nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Khan was immediately pardoned by former Pakistani president general Pervez Musharraf and placed under de facto house arrest.
Unanswered questions remain about the technology that Khan allegedly shared and with whom he shared it, and whether Pakistani authorities knew what he was doing or profited from sales.
Khan began agitating for an end to the restrictions on him after Musharraf was ousted last year. In recent months, he has been allowed to occasionally meet friends outside his house and has spoken to reporters over the phone. The Islamabad High Court announced on Friday he was a “free citizen,” subject to a confidential accord struck with the government.
Hours later, Khan emerged from his house in the Pakistani capital and addressed reporters face-to-face for the first time since 2004.
He said he would not be discussing Pakistan’s secretive atomic bomb program or who else might have been involved in leaking its technology around the world — questions that still puzzle investigators trying to establish the extent of his network’s activities and whether it is still in business.
“We don’t want to talk about the past things,” Khan said as the guards who enforced his long isolation stood aside for a throng of TV crews and journalists.
Government prosecutor Amjad Iqbal Qureshi said the decision to loosen restrictions on Khan was the result of a compromise with Pakistani authorities and that “security measures” for Khan would remain. The government has denied that Khan was under arrest, maintaining the restrictions were to protect him and Pakistan’s state secrets.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
A bipartisan group of US representatives have introduced a draft US-Taiwan Defense Innovation Partnership bill, aimed at accelerating defense technology collaboration between Taiwan and the US in response to ongoing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill was introduced by US representatives Zach Nunn and Jill Tokuda, with US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and US Representative Ashley Hinson joining as original cosponsors, a news release issued by Tokuda’s office on Thursday said. The draft bill “directs the US Department of Defense to work directly with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense through their respective
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
RSS