Four years before Pakistan’s Dr Abdul Qadir Khan was publicly humiliated, then pardoned and placed under house arrest, the British and US authorities were briefed about his role in selling nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Intriguingly, in both London and Washington, however, officials were told to keep quiet about the findings which were only revealed several years later when the risk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of so-called rogue states and terrorists is more real than it ever has been.

Bhopal-born Khan, who stole nuclear secrets from Holland, is revered in Pakistan as the Father of the Islamic Bomb. But Pakistanis pay scant regard to his parallel role where he enriched himself by setting up a nuclear supermarket that also supplied sensitive components to other aspiring nuclear powers.

Under pressure from the US, Khan was arrested on the orders of President Pervez Musharraf in 2004. Later he was pardoned and placed under indefinite house detention after he publicly admitted to selling nuclear weapons technology to Libya.

It now turns out that Libya was just the tip of the iceberg. Four years earlier, a dedicated British customs investigator uncovered a huge black market in nuclear technology, presided over by Khan, that sold items to whoever was prepared to pay for them.

The customs officer — Atif Amin — had started off by investigating one of Khan’s British-based business partners, Abu Siddiqui, who was later convicted of illegally evading British export laws by shipping key nuclear components to Khan’s laboratories (KRL) in Pakistan. These shipments included computer equipment, a 12-ton heat treatment furnace, sophisticated measuring devices, and high-quality aluminum bars.

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