Great Pakistani Scientist

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan


Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, accused in the West of nuclear espionage, is Pakistan's nuclear hero as architect of the country's newly-declared nuclear prowess.He is the brains behind what has been a mysterious and controversial nuclear programme whose latest products are five bombs tested on Thursday and at least one on Saturday - in response to five exploded by arch-rival India this month.

He is also the father of Pakistan's medium-range Ghauri missile, test-fired last month and which is said by officials to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads and hitting most Indian cities.



A scion of a modest family from India's Bhopal state, who loves poetry, flowers, and animals, he is caught in the subcontinent's current nuclear standoff that has rung alarm bells across the globe. Khan, 62, migrated to Pakistan in 1952, following millions of other Muslims who came here from India at the subcontinent's partition at independence from Britain in 1947. After initial graduation in the port city of Karachi, he went to Europe in 1952 for further studies and subsequent work that was later to become the basis of his trial and conviction in the Netherlands on espionage charges. Former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto urged Khan to return home in 1976 to be given the job to organise Pakistan's nuclear programme that could give an answer to India's first nuclear explosion of 1974.

"It was,...to be precise, on July 31, 1976, when the first seeds, real seeds of Pakistan's nuclear programme were sown," Khan recalled in one of his newspaper articles.

"The date marks the turn in our beloved country's destiny as it was on this fateful day that under the banner of 'Engineering Research Laboratories', an autonomous organisation was formed under the orders of the late prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto...."

The aim of the secret laboratories, set up at Kahuta, near Islamabad, was to "establish a uranium enrichment plant and provide Pakistan with nuclear capability", he wrote.

"In a record short span of six years, Pakistan was put on the nuclear map of the world and a solid foundation was laid for our self-sufficiency in future of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy."

Before returning home, Khan worked at the British/German/Dutch Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the Netherlands in the early 1970s. After his return, a Dutch security enquiry revealed he had probably taken with him most of the facility's secrets and a list of its contractors. He was also named in numerous other Western inquiries and media reports about secret purchasing operations for components for Pakistan's uranium enrichment plant. Khan acknowledges he did take advantage of his experience of many years of working on similar projects in Europe and his contacts there with various manufacturing firms, but denies engaging in nuclear espionage for which a court in Amsterdam sentenced him in absentia in 1983 to four years in jail.

An appeals court two years later upheld his appeal against the conviction and quashed the sentence on the summons for the trial had not reached him. The prosecution had the option to renew the charges and issue fresh summons for a trial, but the Dutch government decided against pursuing the case any further, and Khan later said he saw it as an admission that there was no substance in the case.

"The information I had asked for was ordinary technical information available in published literature for many decades," Khan said in a speech afterwards about his two letters to his contacts that became the basis for his prosecution.

"I had requested for it as we had no library of our own at that time."

"Once the Western propaganda reached its climax and all efforts were made to stop or block even the most harmless items, we said enough was enough and decided indigenous production of all the sophisticated electronic, electric and vacuum equipment," he wrote in an article.

"Kahuta is an all-Pakistani effort and is a symbol of a poor and developing country's determination and defiance to submitting to blackmail and bullying."

The past few weeks have been Khan's moments of great triumph. The test-firing of his 1,500-km (937-mile) range Ghauri missile last month was greeted with banners urging him to do more to counter what his fans saw as an Indian threat to Pakistan. And he became the focus of attention after India exploded three nuclear devices on May 11 and two more on May 13, to which Pakistan promised to give an "appropriate answer".

That answer was five Pakistani nuclear blasts on Thursday and at least one on Saturday - a move that spurred jubilation at home and condemnation abroad, coupled with sanctions. Khan scoffs at sanctions which he says will not do much harm to the country.

"Ninety-nine percent people eat bread with onions and they won't be affected," he said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday.

"And the remaining five percent have so much at home and abroad that it will make no difference to them. The middle class will suffer some pressure and they will also adjust."



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