Court gags Pakistan atomic scientist

A court silenced the disgraced architect of Pakistan's atomic weapons programme, weeks after he implicated President Pervez Musharraf in the delivery of nuclear technology to North Korea.

Abdul Qadeer Khan has been kept under de facto house arrest in the Pakistani capital since 2004.

He recently began agitating for an end to his confinement, disowning his confession and saying the Army had known all about at least one act of proliferation in 2000 - a claim swiftly denied by Musharraf, then chief of the armed forces.

An Islamabad High Court judge has forbidden Khan to communicate publicly on proliferation.