Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Rogue in the Ranks
investigators that he transported two containers of used centrifuge
parts from Pakistan to Iran in 1994 or 1995. The containers were ferried
from Dubai to Iran on an Iranian merchant ship. According to Abu
Tahir, the payment for the consignment was paid for by an unnamed
Iranian. The cash, amounting to about $3 million, was brought in two
briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by
Dr Khan each time he visited Dubai. 37
Shortly after the IAEA delivered its findings on Iran in a two-page
letter in November 2003, Musharraf ordered the ISI and the Strategic
Planning and Development cell, which controls the country’s nuclear
programme, to investigate allegations of proliferation. ISI officials
travelled to Malaysia, Dubai, Iran and Libya looking for clues of Dr
Khan’s involvement in the transfer of nuclear technology. Three
senior scientists at KRL were arrested after the investigators found the
allegations were correct. But the most difficult part was to confront
Dr Khan. The responsibility for interrogating the man at the centre of
the proliferation scandal was given to the Director General of the ISI,
Lt.-General Ehsan ul-Haq, and the chief of SPD, Lt.-General-Khalid
Ahmed Qidwai. They first met Dr Khan in December at his villa in the
Margala foothills. Initially Dr Khan denied any wrongdoing. He told
the generals that his activities were known to the army chiefs. To cover
his tracks, Dr Khan wrote to Iranian officials in November 2003 urging
them to destroy some of their facilities and to tell the investigators that
the Pakistanis who had aided them had died. 38 The noose around Dr
Khan’s neck was tightened further with the discovery of new evidence
about his link with the Libyan nuclear programme.
In 2003, US agents intercepted a German ship named BBC China,
carrying parts for a Libyan nuclear facility that led to its renouncing
its nuclear ambitions. Evidence uncovered following Libya’s decision
to give up its nuclear programme in December 2003 revealed how
extensive Dr Khan’s nuclear smuggling network was. A joint British-
American inspection team that visited Libya’s nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons sites over that period were taken aback when they
found that nuclear scientists working on the project had a ‘full bomb
dossier’ from the Pakistanis. The export of nuclear materials to Libya
was much greater than to Iran or to North Korea. It included not only
complete centrifuges and enriched uranium for weapons, but also the
design of the atomic bomb. Pakistanis had also provided information
to Libya on how and where to acquire additional components for their
nuclear programme. 39
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