The wife of disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said Thursday she is challenging his detention in court and suggested officials would be glad if he died without telling his side of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation story. “My husband is not getting any younger –nor am I for that matter – but he is of course under more stress,” she said. “I'm sure they would love to keep him here until he passes away, but we are not willing to wait for that.” Hendrina Khan said that she appointed an attorney earlier this week to petition the Islamabad High Court for an end to the restrictions on her husband's movements and for his freedom to speak to the media. “We have finally made it known to the government that we are no longer willing to sit back and do nothing,” she said, by authorizing a lawyer to act on her behalf. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a hero to many in Pakistan for his key role in developing the country's atomic weapons, has been under virtual house arrest since 2004, when he took sole responsibility for the leakage of sensitive technology to countries including Iran. President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him, but confined him to his villa in the capital. He has rarely ventured out, save for several hospital stays for a host of ailments and a recent visit to the Academy of Sciences in Islamabad to mourn a deceased colleague. After the defeat of Musharraf's allies in February elections, the 72-year-old broke his long silence, claiming he did nothing “unauthorized” and that authorities bullied him into his confession with promises that he would be freed soon after. His outbursts, punctuated with anti-Western tirades, stirred speculation about whether Khan would reveal new details of how Pakistani nuclear secrets reached Libya, North Korea and Iran.
