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UK diplomats attacked, Pakistan scientist's kin held

Posted on: Friday, 12 August 2005, 02:18 CDT

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A son-in-law of Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was being held in custody after an assault on two British diplomats in Islamabad, police said on Friday.

A spokesman for the British High Commission (embassy) said the two diplomats, a man and woman, suffered a "vicious and unprovoked attack" by several men as they were walking home at night in a posh district of the Pakistani capital.

The attack took place in the early hours of Sunday morning, and the two victims required medical treatment, he said. A motive for the attack had not been ascertained, he said.

Police confirmed Saad Ali Khan, Khan's son-in-law, was being held.

"He had some quarrel with the British diplomats," Safeer Bhatti, head of Islamabad's Kohsar police station, said.

"Saad has been taken into custody," he said.

Khan, popularly know as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, has been held under house arrest since admitting in early 2004 that he had sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

President Pervez Musharraf, who is also army chief, has described Khan's admission of guilt as the most embarrassing moment of his presidency.

A former Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, stirred more controversy over Khan this week when he told Dutch radio that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had asked the Netherlands not to take action against the scientist, despite suspicion he was involved in industrial espionage while working for a Dutch uranium enrichment company 30 years ago.

Source: REUTERS

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