Friday, May 26, 2006

Battening down the hatches

It's hardly comeuppance (the less hospitable Adiala Jail has been home to many political prisoners), but apparently the Pakistani government has tightened the house arrest of A.Q. Khan. With the US in a tizzy over Iran and a few days after the House of Representatives reopened the case on the erstwhile 'national hero', it would appear the powers that be have gotten a case of the jitters. Perhaps they were worried that his daughter, a regular visitor until being denied access recently, would sneak out a note naming names?

For an excellent piece on A.Q. Khan's lifetime of deceit and hubris, click here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the place where aq khan built his 'little cottage' (pun intended) has spruced up from being a hamlet to becoming the poshest of islamabad's localities. cyril you may want to check it out on your trip there. the roads are bad and the look isn't that good but the houses....or shall i say villa's....

the locality is now known a Bani gala and lots of others have their homes there. army officers have the highest share i think. the number of majors, colonels and brogadiers that have nameplates outside the gate is definitely visible.

a couple of years back, when i was at hag bag i saw a report commissioned by the ADB about the water quality if rawal lake. Pindi's water supply depends on rawal lake and an alarming number of people had suffered and a few had lost their lives dude to water borne diseases. apparently the water supply was to blame.

so the report found out that the BOD (biological oxygen demand or something like that...) was all over the place. rawal dam had no more fish left and not because of overfishing. apparently, being the illegal locality that Bani-gala was, no sewarage system existed and years and years of fauji, Aq khan, and countless others shit and piss had been channeled into the rawal lake. hence pindi's water woes.

a few months after the report houses were termed illegal and bani gala was declared an illegal colony by CDA ..... but a few generals, highups and don't know who else had homes there made sure nothing unexpected happened.....