Pak’s nuclear hero, villain to the world, dies at 85
ISLAMABAD: Abdul Qadeer Khan, the atomic scientist often referred to as the “father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb” and infamous for his controversial role in nuclear proliferation, died in Islamabad on Sunday after a brief illness. He was 85. Khan, who was born in 1936 in Bhopal and migrated to Pakistan along with his family after the partition in 1947, breathed his last at Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) Hospital - a medical facility named after him.
According to the Associated Press of Pakistan, he hospitalised on August 26 after testing positive for Covid-19. Later, he was shifted to a military hospital in Rawalpindi and was discharged after recovering from the coronavirus disease.
He was brought to KRL Hospital early in the morning after he faced difficulty breathing. Doctors said Khan’s health deteriorated and he eventually couldn’t survive.
“Deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Had known him personally since 1982. He helped us develop nation-saving nuclear deterrence,” President Arif Alvi tweeted. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted that he was “deeply saddened”. “He was loved by our nation because of his critical contribution in making us a nuclear weapon state... For the people of Pakistan, he was a national icon.”
Funeral prayers for Khan were held at Islamabad’s Faisal mosque. A huge number of people, including ministers and representatives of the armed forces, attended his funeral braving rain.
The nuclear physicist was disgraced in 2004 when he was forced to acknowledge responsibility for nuclear technology proliferation and was forced to live a life of house arrest.
Khan, who was awarded Pakistan’s highest civilian honour, Nishan-i-Imtiaz, lived in a posh Islamabad neighbourhood under the watch of security agencies since 2004. In 2009, the Islamabad high court declared Khan a free citizen, allowing him free movement inside Pakistan.
In May 2016, Khan had said that Pakistan could have become a nuclear power as early as 1984 but the then President, General Zia ul Haq -- who was Pakistan’s President from 1978 to 1988 -“opposed the move”.
Khan had also said that Pakistan has the ability to “target” Delhi from Kahuta near Rawalpindi in five minutes. Khan was instrumental in setting up Pakistan’s first nuclear enrichment plant at Kahuta.
In a 2018 book “Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb: A Story of Defiance, Deterrence And Deviance”, Pakistani-American scholar and academic Hassan Abbas has highlighted Khan’s involvement in nuclear proliferation in Iran, Libya and North Korea.
He wrote that the origins and evolution of the Khan network were tied to the domestic and international political motivations underlying Pakistan’s nuclear weapons project. The writer also examined the role of China and Saudi Arabia in supporting its nuclear infrastructure. Khan is reported to have intimate links with China’s nuclear establishment.