“Father” of the Pakistani atomic bomb, he had been accused of selling some technologies to North Korea, Libya and Iran. He died on October 10, at the age of 85.
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Abdul Qadeer Khan was the “father” of the Pakistan atomic bomb. He died on October 10, at the age of 85, in Islamabad. This metallurgy engineer formed in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands was not only the founder of the Pakistani nuclear program, but a controversial character, who found himself at the center of one of the largest global proliferation scandals.
For Pakistan, he will remain a hero, whose photo adorns shops, buses and trucks; The man who has allowed the land to climb to the nuclear powers, such as India, the historical enemy. The detention of the Supreme Weapon has always been considered to the “PUIR country” as an element of national pride.
The atom race started in 1971 after the third war with India, which signed the defeat of Islamabad and endorsed the independence of East Pakistan, the future Bangladesh, supported by the Indians. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan Prime Minister between 1973 and 1977, persuades, while nuclear capacity can ensure a “strategic parity” with its neighbor, better equipped with conventional arming.
But New Delhi has a step ahead and succeeds in its first nuclear test on May 18, 1974. This is the moment that Abdul Qadeer Khan chooses to offer his services to Prime Minister Pakistani. Born the 1 er April 1936 in Bhopal, India, the scientist has always fed a personal animosity with regard to his country of birth that he had to leave five years after the partition of the British Empire, in 1947, to join Pakistan. He did not support the second partition of the country with the loss of Bangladesh.
Flight of plans
Since 1972, he has been working in the Netherlands for the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory, subcontractor of the Dutch partner of Urenco, a consortium of British, German and Netherlands companies created to develop the enrichment of uranium by the use of ultracentrifuges. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was hired as a translator to transcribe German documents in Dutch, succeeds in obtaining the crucial information on this technology.
In 1975, he left the Netherlands with his wife, a British national, and his two daughters, after stealing centrifuge plans and the list of suppliers, mainly European, from which it could get parts. Premier Pakistanis designates him in 1976 to lead the uranium enrichment program.
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