The Islamabad High Court has released Dr. A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear program who was arrested five years ago on charges of selling the country’s nuclear secrets to North Korea and Libya. The court verdict said the charges against him were not substantiated.
Khan’s release is a significant reversal considering the conviction with which then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf put him under house arrest. Musharraf had maintained that Khan had confessed to proliferating nuclear secrets. Khan said he was “forced” by “some elements” in the Musharraf government to confess in January 2004. He said he was told this would be in national interest. "I think the confession was my mistake,” he said.
Like many such cases in Pakistan this one too clearly fails the smell test. Someone is not telling the whole truth—either Musharraf or Khan or both. Why would a man worshipped as a national hero feel compelled to confess to proliferating nuclear secrets if he was truly innocent? On the other hand, why would the country’s president extract such a confession out of someone whom he understood knew everything about Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear program? In an astute move Musharraf kept US investigators from questioning Khan claiming that it was a matter of sovereignty and Pakistan knew how to handle such problems. All this even as he issued a magnanimous presidential pardon. Anyone reasonably sane can see a clear pattern of mutually agreed obfuscation here.
It is a pretty neat arrangement that Khan is out and Musharraf, albeit disgraced, is free to pursue whatever it is that retired generals in Pakistan pursue.
When you look at the ruling elites in Pakistan you get the sense that they are permanently in a deal making mode. Sometimes deals are made in anticipation of a crime, sometimes while a crime is in the process and more often than not after a crime has been committed and its objectives met.
