Pakistan has expanded an investigation of its premier nuclear weapons laboratory, detaining as many as seven scientists and administrators amid allegations sensitive technology may have spread to countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Libya, officials said yesterday. Pakistan has strongly denied any official involvement in sharing technology with those countries but has acknowledged that individual scientists acting on their own may have leaked information.
| I'll believe that when they hang 'em... |
Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed said over the past few days between five and seven personnel at the Khan Research Laboratories were taken in for questioning. But he said the detained men were not "necessarily involved in something or have allegations against them." Among the detained was Islam-ul Haq, a director at the laboratory, who was picked up Saturday as he was dining at the residence of the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Haq is Khan’s principal staff officer. Haq’s wife, Nilofar Islam, said Khan told her that her husband was detained but "we have had no contact with him. We don’t know where he is."
| "We've looked everywhere!" |
The nuclear program investigations came as Pakistan intensifies crackdowns as part of the US-led war on terror, most recently arresting seven suspected Al Qaeda militants yesterday and seizing a weapons cache in the port city of Karachi. During the past two months, Pakistan has interrogated a handful of scientists at the laboratory, acting on information about Iran’s nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, officials say. Khan has also been questioned, although he has not been detained and is still treated as a dignitary in Pakistan.
| And I suspect he'll continue to be treated so... |
The Jan. 2 arrest at a Denver airport of South African-based businessman Asher Karni, accused of smuggling nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan, deepened suspicions of the country’s involvement in the nuclear black market. The New York Times also reported that sophisticated centrifuge design technology used to enrich uranium had been passed to Libya even after a pledge by President Pervez Musharraf to rein in Pakistani scientists. Pakistan dismissed the allegation as "absolutely false." |