Pakistani Denies Father Passed Nuclear Secrets

A former Pakistani nuclear scientist suspected of links to Islamic extremists met Osama bin Laden twice in Afghanistan but did not reveal any nuclear secrets, the scientist’s son asserted Monday.

Bashiruddin Mehmood, who retired from Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission in 1999, did not tell his family that he had met with Bin Laden in 2000 and 2001, said his son, Asim Mehmood.

The younger Mehmood said the family learned about the meetings after Pakistani authorities detained his father in October to investigate possible ties to Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and its efforts to obtain nuclear technology.

Mehmood said his father never discussed nuclear technology with Bin Laden, and he insisted that his father never revealed any nuclear secrets.

“These are all allegations. There is no truth in them,” he said.

U.S. officials have long been suspicious of Bashiruddin Mehmood’s contacts with Bin Laden, according to Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.N. Security Council ordered the assets of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, a charity Mehmood organized after his retirement, frozen in December after the United States declared it an organization with terrorist ties.

According to his son, Mehmood went to Afghanistan in 2000 in connection with the charity, which planned ventures including a flour mill and irrigation projects. He said Mehmood sank his savings in the ventures and hoped to profit.

Asim Mehmood said his father also met Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and that his father wanted to interest Bin Laden in financing a polytechnic college in the Afghan capital, Kabul. “But Osama was not interested,” the son said.

In January, the Pakistani government decided not to prosecute Bashiruddin Mehmood but to keep him under tight surveillance.