Pakistan: Curbs on nuclear scientist lifted

[tyovan]

A court in Pakistan has lifted the final restrictions on controversial nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, allowing him total freedom of movement.

Dr Khan, whose work helped Pakistan become a nuclear state, spent years under house arrest after he admitted selling off nuclear weapons secrets.

In February 2009 most restrictions on him were lifted, but he still had to notify authorities of his movements.

He subsequently filed a petition arguing for further freedoms.

Dr Khan confessed to transferring nuclear weapons technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran in 2004 but was later pardoned by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

He has since said that the charges against him were false and that his confession was "forced".

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says that despite his confession and detention, Dr Khan remains very popular among many Pakistanis who regard him as a national hero.

But the "father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb" was placed under house arrest and not allowed to meet anyone.

This included US and IAEA experts who wanted to investigate the extent of his proliferation activities, our correspondent says.

The US has repeatedly said it wants to question Dr Khan, but Pakistan has always refused access.

'No limitations'

"Dr Khan can come and go anywhere as he pleases, and no one should prevent him from doing this," Justice Ejaz Ahmed, the presiding judge at Lahore high court, said in his remarks in court.

"We must implement the Islamabad high court's decision in spirit and letter.

"There should be no limitations on Dr Khan's movements and meetings."


In his petition to Lahore's high court, Dr Khan argued, "I continue to be a prisoner despite having been released on court orders.

"The government has used the judgement of the Islamabad high court by limiting my movement under the guise of providing me security," he said.

The Lahore court is the highest judicial body of Pakistan's Punjab province.

It is not clear whether the authorities will heed the court's decision.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8226124.stm

More great news from our freedom-loving 'ally'...

[hulaku]

Apparently Dr.Khan was writing columns for a newspaper until somebody realised he was just picking up everything from the net. He was always good at itp-)


Monday, August 24, 2009
This is with reference to Dr A Q Khan’s column “Science of computers — part I” which appeared in your pages on Aug 19.

1. Dr Khan writes: “The computer is an essential part of 21st century life. Computer science is a fast-moving subject that gives rise to a range of interesting and often challenging problems. The implementation of today’s complex computer systems requires the skills of a knowledgeable and versatile computer scientist. Artificial intelligence — the study of intelligent behaviour — is having an increasing reference on computer system design. Distributed systems, networks and the internet are now central to the study of computing, presenting both technical and social challenges.”

Now compare this to the first paragraph of Undergraduate Prospectus 2009, University of Sussex(www.sussex.ac.uk/units/publications/ugrad2009/subjects/computing):

“Computing is an essential part of 21st-century life, and is an exceptionally fast-moving subject that gives rise to a range of interesting and challenging problems. The implementation of today’s complex computing systems, networks and multimedia systems requires the skills of knowledgeable and versatile computer scientists. Computer networks and the internet are now central to the study of computing and information technology, presenting both technical and social challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) — the study of intelligent behaviour — is having an increasing influence on computer system design.”

2. Dr Khan writes: “How do we understand, reason, plan, cooperate, converse, read and communicate? What are the roles of language and logic? What is the structure of the brain? How does vision work? These are all questions as fundamental as the sub-atomic structure of matter. These are also questions where the science of computing plays an important role in our attempts to provide answers. The computer scientist can expect to come face-to-face with problems of great depth and complexity and, together with scientists, engineers and experts in other fields, may help to solve them. Computing is not just about the big questions; it is also about engineering-making things work. Computing is unique in offering both the challenge of science and the satisfaction of engineering.”

Now compare this to the first paragraph of Imperial College London website (www3.imperial.ac.uk/engineering/teaching/exploringengineering/computing): “How do we understand, reason, plan, cooperate, converse, read and communicate? What are the roles of language and logic? What is the structure of the brain? How does vision work? These are questions as fundamental, in their own way, as questions about the sub-atomic structure of matter. They are also questions where the science of computing plays an important role in our attempts to provide answers. The computer scientist can expect to come face-to-face with problems of great depth and complexity and, together with scientists, engineers and experts in other fields, may help to disentangle them. But computing is not just about the big questions it is also about engineering-making things work. Computing is unique in offering both the challenge of a science and the satisfaction of engineering.”

3. Furthermore, Dr Khan writes: “Computer science is an inter-disciplinary subject. It is firmly rooted in engineering and mathematics, with links to linguistics, psychology and other fields. Computer science is concerned with constructing hardware and software systems, digital electronics, compiler design, programming languages, operation systems, networks and graphics. Theoretical computer science addresses fundamental issues: the motion of computable function, proving the correctness of hardware and software and the theory of communicating system.

Again the University of Cambridge website (www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/compsci) contains the following text: (First paragraph) “Computer science is interdisciplinary. It is firmly rooted in engineering and mathematics, with links to linguistics, psychology and other fields. [...] (Second paragraph) Practical computer science is concerned with constructing hardware and software systems: digital electronics, compiler design, programming languages, operating systems, networks and graphics. Theoretical computer science addresses fundamental issues: the notion of computable function, proving the correctness of hardware and software, the theory of communicating systems.”

4. The second half of Dr Khan’s article (paragraph 7 onwards) can be found in ACM’s Computing Curricula 2009. Although he credits ACM but doesn’t clarify that he is directly copying sentences from a document. Also, in the beginning of his piece he does acknowledge one of his former colleagues, an Engineer Nasim Khan, for input for the article — however, it is not clear whether this input is the reason for the apparent plagiarism.

Fahad Rafique Dogar

PhD student, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA, US

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=194555

PS: The link is from a Pakistani paper.

[khalsa1699]

his freedom means he is free to work for any one paying higher $$$?

[MG 3]

If he can muster the strength to walk. The dude is really ill......

[khalsa1699]

If he can muster the strength to walk. The dude is really ill......

i saw him giving interview on GEO TV and he was standing outside his house, talking and smiling, didnt looked ill a bit!

[MG 3]

i saw him giving interview on GEO TV and he was standing outside his house, talking and smiling, didnt looked ill a bit!

When was that? His access to the media is restricted these days cause there is big controversy about the 1998 nuclear tests going on and no one can get him on TV.

[3rdMillhouse]

Well, if Obama has got any brains on his head, and balls between his legs, he'll sanction a CIA operation to assassinate this Abdul Qadeer. Bastard is far too dangerous to be left alive. But i'ts not like I'm hopefull or anything, given that the dems have lost track of their scrotum somewhere in the 70s........

[khalsa1699]

CIA should keep an eye on Dr Khan, says Cheney

By Anwar Iqbal
Monday, 31 Aug, 2009 | 04:40 AM PST |

WASHINGTON: Former US vice-president **** Cheney said on Sunday that instead of probing CIA’s interrogation techniques, the Obama administration should use the agency to find what A. Q. Khan was up to.

Mr Cheney – an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, particularly on national security issues – took the administration head on in his pre-taped interview to Fox News, calling the investigation of CIA interrogators an ‘outrageous political act’.

‘The courts in Pakistan have ruled that A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistan nuclear weapon, who provided assistance to the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Libyans, has now been released from custody,’ Mr Cheney said.

‘It’s very, very important we find out and know long-term what he’s up to. He’s so far the worst proliferator of nuclear technology in recent history.’
The CIA, he said, had ‘agents and people’ who ought to be on that case and worry about it, but now they would be busy hiring lawyers at their own expense in order to defend themselves.

Mr Cheney said the Bush administration started the use of the Predator drones ‘very aggressively’ to target militants hiding in Fata and he was ‘very proud’ of such decisions.

‘Marrying up the intelligence platform with weapons is something we started in August of 2001. It’s been enormously successful. And they were successful the other day in killing Baitullah Mehsud, which -- I think all of those are pluses.’

President Barack Obama’s decision to investigate CIA agents who carried out those policies, however, would ‘seriously undermine the morale of our folks out at the agency,’ he added. ‘(It would set) a terrible, terrible precedent.’

Asked when he was the vice-president, did he know that CIA agents were using mock executions, handguns and electric drills to interrogate the suspects and used waterboarding against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, Mr Cheney said: ‘I knew about the waterboarding, not specifically in any one particular case but as a general policy that we had approved.’
‘Do you think what they did was wrong?’ he was asked.

‘My sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives, in preventing further attacks against the United States, in giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed.’

Such interrogations, he said, led to the arrest of nearly all Al Qaeda members now in US custody. ‘I think they were directly responsible for the fact that for eight years we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States.’

‘It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well,’ he added.

‘So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorisation, you’re OK with it?’ he was asked.’ I am,’ said the former vice-president.

The US administration, he said, sometimes asks the CIA people to ‘do some very difficult things’ that put their own lives at risk and they ‘do so at the direction of the president.’

If those people were subjected to investigation, ‘nobody’s going to sign up for those kinds of missions,’ Mr Cheney warned. ‘It’s a very, very devastating, I think, effect that it has on morale inside the intelligence community.’

President Obama’s decision to investigate CIA agents, he said, was a political move with no rationale.

Mr Cheney said that only a few months ago, President Obama had assured the CIA that there would not be ‘any look-back’ at those who were carrying out the policies of the previous administration.

‘Now they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party and they’re reversing course on that.’

Mr Cheney said that the other thing that ‘offends the hell out of me’, is the possibility that the Obama administration might want to investigate all those who, during the last eight years, were defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda.

‘I think it’s an outrageous political act that will do great damage long term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions without having to worry about what the next administration’s going to say about it,’ said Mr Cheney.


http://beta.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/09-cia-should-keep-an-eye-on-dr-khan-says-cheney--szh-10

[3rdMillhouse]

Cheney is right in every word he said. Specially about Obama interference within CIA. The last thing CIA needs after 9/11 is another politically correctness purge just to please the liberals within US's society.

[SBL]

Time for the ricin umbrella?

[khalsa1699]

A.Q. Khan still poses proliferation risk, US warns

WASHINGTON: The United States warned Tuesday that reputed Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has regained freedom of movement in Pakistan, still risks spreading his nuclear weapons know-how.

It stopped short of criticizing its ally in the war on terror but recalled that Washington has long raised with Islamabad its fears about Khan, who five years ago admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
‘Our concerns over the potential for... proliferation activities by Mr. Khan are well known to the Pakistani government. We believe that he remains a proliferation risk,’ State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
A State Department official told AFP earlier on condition of anonymity that Khan represented a ‘serious’ risk.

‘We’re following this closely,’ Kelly added when asked about the development at the daily news briefing.

In February, a Pakistani court declared Khan a free man, five years after the reputed father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb was effectively put under house arrest for operating a clandestine proliferation network.
Last Friday, the 72-year-old Khan complained to a high court that his movements were still being restricted by the government’s security arrangements on his behalf.

The court ordered the government to respond to Khan’s claim on September 4.

Local media quoted Khan as saying the restrictions had been withdrawn ahead of Friday’s hearing.

Khan told AFP the reports were correct but added he could not elaborate because the court had barred him from giving interviews to foreign media.
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and nuclear specialist, told AFP that ‘it is a mistake’ to remove restrictions on a man who cannot be ‘trusted.’He said there is a risk that Khan, who retracted his 2004 confession, will now be able to offer nuclear know-how to scientists from Iran, North Korea and any other rogue countries feared to be pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), said Khan may now not just be motivated by money, but also a ‘bitterness’ with the West over his house arrest.

Last year, Albright wrote on the ISIS website that there were strong suspicions Khan could have sold Iran and North Korea blueprints for an advanced nuclear warhead.

He said the United States and the UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), must be allowed to question Khan to learn if he had sold such plans to Pyongyang or Tehran.

But he told AFP Tuesday that the United States never used its leverage to arrange for such questioning amid fears it would provoke a ‘backlash’ in Pakistan, a key US ally.

American lawmakers in March introduced legislation aimed at cutting off military aid to Pakistan unless US officials could question Khan.
Albright said the US government should now push for Khan to be extradited to European countries or the United States for prosecution over possible violation of proliferation laws.

A second State Department official told reporters later Tuesday on the condition of anonymity that he expected US concerns to be raised again with the authorities in Islamabad, but could not confirm they had been.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had expressed concerns when Islamabad High Court eased restrictions on Khan in February. — AFP


http://beta.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/09-aq-khan-still-poses-proliferation-risk-us--szh-06

[Kilgor]

Time for the ricin umbrella?

Random car explosion, god damm those Ford Pinto's

[3rdMillhouse]

Random car explosion, god damm those Ford Pinto's

That **** blows up all time, I died 4 times last week because of those damn cars.

But, seriously speaking, a full blown out assassination would sen the right message, to the right people.