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The daughter of the Pakistani scientist accused of heading the biggest nuclear smuggling ring in history is disputing claims made about her father by Pakistan’s President his new autobiography.

In a statement sent to the National Security News Service, Dina Khan, the daughter of scientist A.Q. Khan, says that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s assertion that her father instructed her to leak secrets about Pakistan’s nuclear program is “utterly ludicrous.”

A.Q. Khan has been under house arrest since early 2004, when he admitted passing nuclear secrets and technology to Libya, Iran and Pakistan.

In his newly published autobiography, In the Line of Fire, Musharraf writes that while investigating Khan’s activities prior to his arrest, Pakistan’s intelligence service intercepted a letter from the scientist to his daughter, who lives in London, that contained “detailed instructions for her to go public on Pakistan’s nuclear secrets.”  News stories in 2004 suggested Khan had given his daughter records, including a sworn statement, floppy disks and a video tape, ostensibly proving that his exports of nuclear technology had been carried out at the behest of the Pakistani government.

Dina Khan denies Musharraf’s account. She says while visiting her parents in Pakistan in the midst of the investigation into her father’s activities, her father gave her a copy of a letter he had written to her mother. At the time, she writes, her father was worried that he was “going to be made to take the fall for the erupting nuclear scandal.” The letter, she adds, gave her father’s account of “what really transpired” and asked that her mother “release those details in the event of my father being killed or made to disappear.”

The letter, according to Dina, “mentioned people and places” but contained “absolutely NO nuclear blueprints or information.” She also says that she was questioned about the letter by agents from Britain’s domestic security service, MI5, but that they were “satisfied that I had not committed any crimes” and was “not in possession of any important information.”

In her statement, Dina Khan writes that “the mistake my father made was in being far too vocal in his opinions about those in power” and that he is now “paying the price,” in the form of house arrest. “Perhaps the hope is to have him rot quietly at home, forgotten by all,” she adds. “That will never happen. The truth will come out eventually, it always does.”

A copy of Dina Khan’s statement is available here.

A recent 60 Minutes interview with Pervez Musharraf, on which the National Security News Service assisted, is available here.

Image from: Dr. A.Q. Khan and The Islamic Bomb by Zahid Malik, Hurmat Publications, Islamabad, Pakistan.