Islamabad, April 2:

Disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said he hoped to be freed by the new government and blasted his “illogical” detention, according to a newspaper interview published today.

Khan publicly confessed in February 2004 to passing atomic secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He was pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf but has been kept under house arrest ever since.

Hailed as a hero by many Pakistanis for transforming the country into the Islamic world’s first nuclear power, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and was hospitalised last month with complications.

“The real hooliganism is that I have been confined, and it is the cause of all my ills,” Khan was quoted as saying by the Urdu-language Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper in his first face-to-face interview in four years. The newspaper said Khan had complained of being the victim of illegal restrictions and expressed the hope that the new elected government would end the “unlawful” restrictions on him soon.

Khan dismissed the previous government’s explanation that he was being kept at his Islamabad villa for his own safety.

“It is illogical reasoning,” Khan told the newspaper.

Khan also rejected official accounts that he was in good health“I don’t feel life in my legs,” he said.

Members of the new government have indicated that they may consider freeing Khan as they review Musharraf’s policies over the last nine years and seek to roll back his powers.