An Israeli investigative journalist has made a sensational claim. Israeli journalist Yossi Melman said that Mossad would have killed Pakistan's nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan if he had come to know earlier. In an article in the Haarez newspaper, Yossi Melman wrote that Abdul Qadeer Khan, who made Pakistan a nuclear power, stole confidential information related to the making of the atomic bomb and sold it to countries that could be a threat to us. If the Israeli intelligence agency had come to know of Qadir's intentions at the right time, then Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit would have immediately sent a team to kill him.
In an article titled How Pakistan's A Q Khan, Father of the Muslim Bomb, Escaped Mossad Assassination, Mailman wrote that Mossad had been tracking Khan's visits to the Middle East, but correctly identified his attempts to build a suspicious nuclear proliferation network. Could not
He wrote- As Shavit told me a decade and a half ago that Mossad and Aman (Israel's military intelligence agency) did not understand Khan's intention. Shavit said that if he and his accomplices had ascertained Khan's motives accurately, they would have thought of sending a Mossad team to kill the Pakistani scientist.
Abdul Qadeer Khan is the same person who is called the father of the Islamic nuclear bomb. He was also accused of selling nuclear technology to several countries. These include countries like Iran and Libya. Pakistan's greatest nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan died on Sunday (October 10) morning at the age of 85 after suffering from breathing problems.
In 1998, US News Week magazine published a report accusing Dr. Khan of selling nuclear secrets to Iraq. A few years later, the then US President George W. Bush conducted an intelligence investigation, which revealed that Dr. Khan had also sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Iraq. Israel considers Iran's nuclear program a threat to itself. Israel has vowed to thwart Iran's attempts to build a nuclear bomb.
When Dr. Khan confessed to the charges against him, the then President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf removed him from the nuclear program in 2002. This confession caused a stir in the international media. The US Time magazine named him 'Merchant of Menace', that is, a merchant of destruction.
He was placed under house arrest in 2004. Seeing his arrest and the Musharraf government's inclination towards the US government, many political parties and Pakistani citizens came out in support of him and he was made a national hero. After this, the then Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani dropped all the charges against him.