Recent AQK Account

From a recent review of Espionage of the Century by Zahid Said, former Counselor in Pakistan’s Netherlands embassy:

Dr Khan requested Ambassador Zahid to send some documents and other material through diplomatic bag to Islamabad as PAEC Chairman Dr Munir had requested for them. After some reluctance, Zahid Said agreed to receive the huge cache of papers and metal parts of the centrifuge to be shifted to Pakistan unchecked and unnoticed by the local authorities through a diplomatic channel.

In the hair-raising details of the events and challenges that followed the writer brings the material from Dr Khan’s residence to his official building where they lay in the garage for a few days. It was a grave risk and even a minute leakage was sufficient to sabotage the diplomatic ties with The Netherlands. According to the writer, when he informed his boss Agha Shahi, the then Secretary Foreign Affairs about his decision to help Dr Khan [which was in fact a help to his nation and country] he was livid to know how a junior officer of the Pakistani mission could dare act on his own without taking the Foreign Office into confidence. Zahid Said was thus directed to dump the material on some coast of the sea. However, he decided to do the opposite and handed the material to another Pakistani diplomat safely.

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