Ten days after Pakistan tested its first atomic bomb in 1998, the wife of a major North Korean arms dealer was shot to death near the heavily guarded home here of the nuclear program's leader, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Authorities hushed up the mysterious shooting of Kim Sa Nae, and it was more than a year before news broke that she was probably killed by North Koreans.
| Another chapter in a very bad novel. Kinda hard on poor Kim Sa Nae, though... |
After Khan's confession in early February that he secretly sold nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya, Kim's death is taking on a new meaning as fresh details emerge. Pakistan's government and military say that Khan and at least seven associates were motivated by greed and acted without official knowledge or approval. But details of Kim's death on June 7, 1998, and the way Pakistani authorities handled it, may hold clues to what officials actually knew about Khan's activities. Kim previously has been described as the wife of a mid-ranking North Korean diplomat. But present and former staff members at Khan Research Laboratories, or KRL say that was a cover story. The officials said Kim was part of a 20-member delegation of North Korean engineers and scientists whom Khan had invited to witness Pakistan's first underground nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, and to learn how to enrich uranium for a North Korean bomb. There has long been speculation that Kim was killed by her own government because she was suspected of spying for the United States or another Western power. Officials in both Pakistan and India backed that version of events. A Pakistani official said his country's intelligence agents suspected that the United States was using Kim as a mole inside the North Korean delegation, but that her actions were uncovered by Pakistani and North Korean agents.
An Indian official who is familiar with his government's assessment of the killing said bluntly: "She was in fact killed by the North Koreans on the grounds that she was in touch with certain Western diplomats." A Pakistani intelligence source said Kim and the rest of the North Korean delegation was staying in a guest house in the compound of Khan's home when Kim was killed. Even after reports the next year revealed she was probably killed on purpose, few Pakistani officials would talk about it. They said a neighbor's cook accidentally killed the North Korean woman when he fired a shotgun borrowed from a guard. Another account at the time claimed that one of Khan's neighbors accidentally killed Kim when his gun fired as he was cleaning it in the garage. A coroner was not allowed to carry out an autopsy on Kim's body, and authorities told local police not to open a file on her death. Khan told The Times in a 1999 interview that Pakistani intelligence services told him that Kim's death was an accident. "You Americans always try to put the blame on us," he said.
| Seems like there may have been some justification, doesn't it? |
Three days after she was shot, Kim's body was spirited out of Pakistan on a chartered Pakistani cargo plane, a source said. The plane, a U.S.-built C-130 military transport, was the same one that Khan recently told investigators he had used to ship plans and equipment for making a nuclear bomb, according to the official, who is familiar with Khan's signed 12-page confession. The plane carried Kim's body back to North Korea along with P-1 and P-2 centrifuges, used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material, according to the source. The cargo also included drawings, sketches, technical data and depleted uranium hexafluoride gas, which is converted into weapons-grade material in centrifuges, the source said. The Pakistani source said the aircraft was under the control of his country's air force. The Indian official said the charter flight was operated by Shaheen Air International, one of several large corporations run by Pakistan's military. The company began operating in 1993, and its current chairman is the air force chief of staff, Air Chief Marshal Kaleem Saadat. Six of its seven directors are retired air force officers. |