Pakistan Sheds No Light on Detained Scientists

A court hearing erupted in angry shouting Tuesday when a lawyer for Pakistan’s government refused to satisfy a judge’s demand that he explain why intelligence authorities were detaining nuclear weapons scientists without having filed charges.

Lawyers for the detainees’ families say the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency is holding at least eight scientists and three retired military officers amid allegations that Pakistanis sold bomb-making secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

President Pervez Musharraf and three senior government ministers have said at least some of the men taken in for interrogation over the last two months are rogue profiteers guilty of selling nuclear weapons secrets for personal gain.

The detainees’ families say that the men have not sold any secrets and that it is impossible to do so because of tight security. Any sale to governments abroad of information crucial to Pakistan’s national security, they say, could not have been done without the military’s knowledge and approval.

Many here think that senior military officers are making scapegoats of national heroes who have helped Pakistan become the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation. The emotional debate, which is feeding widespread opposition to Musharraf, exploded in the courtroom here Tuesday.

High court Justice Maulvi Anwar ul-Haq had ordered last week that the government explain in writing Tuesday why the men were in custody. But instead, the government’s lawyer, Tariq Shamim, asked for a fourth adjournment when he came into court, saying he needed more time to get the information. He also told the court that “in a few days’ time, this matter will be over.”

“Anybody who is responsible for [leaking nuclear secrets] will be dealt with by an iron hand, as the president said,” Shamim told the judge. “They have scandalized the country, my lord. They have sold the country, my lord.”

When Shamim added that anyone cleared of suspicion by the investigation could return to work at the Khan Research Laboratories, where Pakistan designs and builds its nuclear bombs, one of the scientists’ relatives said: “We don’t want them to be back on the job, we want them back at home.”

The government’s lawyer angrily shot back: “They have made enough money.”

The court erupted in shouts of “Shame! Shame!”

The judge stormed from the bench and summoned the lead lawyer for each side to his chambers, where he told them the hearing would resume today.

Lawyers for relatives of the detainees said the government had shown disdain for both the high court justice and the basic principles of Pakistani law, which bars authorities from detaining anyone for more than 24 hours without the approval of a magistrate.

Ordinarily, a magistrate can permit someone’s detention without charge for a maximum of 14 days. But Mohammed Farooq, the first scientist from the KRL facility detained in December, is still in custody without charge after nearly two months.

“They are acting as if there is the law of the jungle in Pakistan,” Mohammed Ikram Chaudhry, a lawyer for the detainees, told the court. “There is no law. There is no constitution.”

None of at least 26 people taken into custody since December for questioning about the alleged transfer of nuclear technology have appeared before a magistrate or been allowed to consult an attorney, relatives and their lawyers said.

Military intelligence officers are still holding 11 current and former staff members of the top-secret KRL nuclear facility, family members said Tuesday. Chaudhry told the court that they are in the custody of military intelligence officers at the ISI’s headquarters in Islamabad, the capital.

The government’s lawyer said Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed had designated an official to help put the families in touch with the detainees. But Saima Adil, daughter of KRL’s chief engineer, Nazeer Ahmed, 57, said the minister threatened her when he set up the phone call to her father.

“He said, ‘What are you doing speaking to the media?’ ” she said outside court.

“We’re concerned about his life,” Adil added, speaking of her father. “We’re concerned about his safety. He’s an old man.”

Ahmed, who was arrested Jan. 17, has been allowed to speak to his family by phone only twice, she said. The second call, arranged by the information minister Monday night, lasted one minute, she said.

When Chaudhry asked the judge to order the government to produce the detainees in court -- in his private chambers if necessary -- Shamim said authorities couldn’t move the men for security reasons because they might be abducted, perhaps by “Indian agents.”

Clearly frustrated by the lawyers’ bickering and the government’s refusal to heed his orders and produce at least some information on the detainees, the judge complained that newspapers around the world had more details than he did.

“Everyone in the world is serious [about this], but so far as my court is concerned, no one appears to be serious,” Ul-Haq said. “Everyone is saying whatever he likes -- except that nobody is telling me what is happening.”

More than a dozen relatives of the detained scientists and retired military officers wore lapel buttons bearing photos of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, framed by nuclear missiles. Several said they thought that Khan was the prime target of the investigation.

Most Pakistanis idolize him as a national hero; he is far more popular than any of the country’s political or military leaders, and the government risks a sharp backlash if it charges him with selling nuclear weapons secrets for profit.

Although Pakistani officials say Khan has been questioned, they deny that he has been detained and say he continues to work as Musharraf’s science advisor. Some reports have linked former military chief Mirza Aslam Beg to the nuclear leaks, but he and Musharraf deny that he is involved.

The government was forced to confront allegations that it helped spread nuclear weapons technology after Iran exposed the Pakistan link to U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency last year.

At first, Pakistani officials insisted that only a few nuclear scientists were taken in for routine “debriefing.” Officials attributed any leak of secrets to individuals acting on their own who might have sold the information as far back as two decades ago, well before Musharraf took power.

On Monday, Ahmed, the information minister, told reporters that Musharraf and other top officials had decided there were “one or two scientists who sold the country’s nuclear technology to Iran and Libya.”

Musharraf told a television interviewer: “We will punish them. And we will be very harsh with them because they are enemies of the state and they have done something for personal and financial gain.”