Word: islamabad
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Nearly five years after confessing to his role in the world's biggest nuclear-proliferation scandal, the disgraced nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan has been set free after securing a surprise court triumph. Bowing to a six-week-old request that he be released from house arrest, the Islamabad High Court on Friday declared Khan "a free citizen," allowing him to walk out of his prolonged sentence. Moments after the decision, the man who in 2004 tumbled from grace after admitting to hawking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea stepped out onto the front porch...
...said he claimed sole responsibility for his actions. The next day, then President Musharraf pardoned the father of the country's nuclear program, citing his status as a national hero for establishing Pakistan as the first Muslim nuclear state and sparing him the indignity of a trial and imprisonment. Islamabad has since repeatedly rebuffed all calls from the IAEA and Washington to question Khan, saying that it has passed on all relevant information and considers the case closed...
...sparked controversy after giving a slew of interviews in which he retracted his confession and claimed that he had been forced to read a statement handed to him. Khan also claimed that the army had colluded in at least one nuclear transaction - a charge Musharraf angrily denied. The Islamabad High Court swiftly muzzled him in July 2008, denying any future access to the media. But over recent months, he began writing a regular newspaper column, "Random Thoughts," a platform he has used to rail against Musharraf's campaign against militancy and to fondly recall decades past, when...
...outside his villa on Friday, in the shade of the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad, Khan was contemptuous of the anxiety his release is certain to trigger in the West. It is only public approval in Pakistan that he desires, Khan said, no doubt aware that he is still admired by broad sections of conservative and hard-line religious opinion for allowing Pakistan to match rival India's membership in the nuclear club...
...Abdul Qadeer Khan a threat to nuclear nonproliferation? The father of Pakistan's nuclear program may have been freed from house arrest by an Islamabad court, but in the U.S. the jury's still out on how much harm Khan himself could do. The general consensus, however, is that his release sends a bad signal...