Pakistan Frees AQ Khan

[tekisui]

Source: Al Jazeera

A court in Pakistan has ended the house arrest of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist who admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Khan, considered the "father of Pakistan's atomic bomb," will be allowed to receive visitors and leave his home following Friday's judgement, but must still report to authorities.

Khan's movements were restricted despite being pardoned by Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan, after his confession in 2004.

"The court has said as he was not involved in nuclear proliferation or criminal activity, there is no case against him, therefore, he is a free citizen," Ali Zafar, Khan's lawyer, told local television.

Khan, who has been treated for prostate cancer must, however, give 48 hours notice if he wants to leave Islamabad.

The Pakistani government says the restrictions that remain are for his own security.

In July, a court had eased restrictions on Khan, allowing him to visit relatives in Pakistan but banning him from giving interviews on proliferation.


more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/02/200926102030375364.html

[KharmaTrain]

1. And One Wonders Why Renditions Aren't Being Ruled Out...

I am totally against the extraordinary renditions, but it was using that tactic that helps us nab the 1993 WTC bombers and bring them to trial. If we wished or waited for our "allies" in Pakistan to do it, we'll be paying them off for the next 50 years.

Kahn's operations are big money for the Pakistan military...this house arrest thing has been a sham from the outset. My bets the arrangements were lax to start with and now that the boooshies are gone, the charade can come to an end.

I've long felt that if there were a loose nuke unleashed, it wouldn't be coming out of Iran, but from Pakistan. Looks like the "good doc" is back in biz.

[mod mom]

2. Renditions vs Extraordinary rendition (Rendition is just moving people from one jurisdiction to

another) I just read this and thought other's might be interested:


Obama officials, of course, are a different story: they would know, and they have no vested interest in believing that the previous administration's policies are somehow inevitable. The Times quotes only one official, who says: "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. (...) if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice." It's important, here, to note that extraordinary rendition is not the same as rendition proper. Rendition is just moving people from one jurisdiction (in the cases at hand, one country) to another; includes all sorts of perfectly normal things, like extradition, which are not problematic legally. Extraordinary rendition is rendition outside these established legal processes: e.g., kidnapping someone abroad so that s/he can be brought to the US to stand trial, or delivering someone to another country to be tortured.

The author of the Times article, however, defines "rendition" as "secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States." It's not clear whether he knows that rendition includes perfectly normal things like extradition. It's also not clear that he knows that extraordinary rendition includes not just cases in which we transfer a detainee to another country, but cases in which we capture someone abroad and take them to this country to be tried.

What is clear, however, is that Obama's executive order prohibits sending people off to other countries where there are substantial grounds to think that they will be tortured, and commits his administration not just to hoping that this will not happen, but to trying to figure out how to keep it from happening. I will continue to watch what the Obama administration does. If they backtrack on their commitment not to engage in extraordinary rendition, I will call them on it. But I don't think that this article provides evidence that they will.

-snip

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016703.php

[blm]

4. extraordinary renditions wouldn't work as well as opening the books on BCCI and BushInc's role in

MAKING Khsn snd his network.

The Pakistani people would see him more as the tool for BushInc and his global fascist cronies spreading terrorism and fear as a way to better secure THEIR global MARKETPLACE.

[blm]

3. and the CHARADE goes on...want Pakistani people to TURN on Khan? Open BCCI books and let them know

he's been working for decades FOR BushInc and the powerful cronies who set up BCCI for the moneyflow needed for their proliferation, armsdealing, drugrunning, moneylaundering, and other financial crimes of the economic elite BushInc serves.

None of this would be a problem today if Clinton hadn't deepsixed BCCI matters throughout the 90s as he served the interests of Poppy Bush and Jackson Stephens, and Dubai and Saudi royals involved in BCCI.