Pakistan may ease restrictions on renegade scientist

[struggle4progress]

SAEED SHAH
From Friday's Globe and Mail
April 11, 2008 at 4:26 AM EDT

ISLAMABAD — The new government in Pakistan is set to consider significantly easing restrictions on A. Q. Khan, the renegade scientist who has been under house arrest for four years since confessing to running an international black market in nuclear technology ...

Abdul Qadeer Khan has been under house arrest in Islamabad since January of 2004, when he admitted his proliferation activities in an address on national television ...

"I saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation, and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself," he said. The suggestion that he covered up for others involved in the illicit trade may not help his cause; the remark is understood to have alarmed officials.

Mr. Khan was pardoned by Mr. Musharraf after his confession and he has never been charged with any crime. He led a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan to compete with bitter rival India, a project that saw the testing of the country's nuclear bomb in 1988 ...

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