National hero or renegade? AQ Khan admitted to run nuke proliferation network

Lauded in Pakistan for helping it become world's first Islamic nuclear weapons power, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who died on Sunday, is seen in the West as a dangerous renegade. The scientist has been allegedly responsible for smuggling nuclear technology to rogue states.

The scientist died at the age of 85 in Islamabad after being hospitalised with COVID-19. He was revered as "the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb".

The nuclear scientist was seen as a national hero for bringing the country on a par with India in the atomic field.

The scientist was also accused of illegally proliferating nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Khan was placed under house arrest in Islamabad in 2004 after admitting to running a nuclear proliferation network to the three countries.

The scientist’s contribution to nuclear programme of Pakistan was the procurement of a blueprint for uranium centrifuges, which could help in transforming uranium into weapons-grade fuel for nuclear fissile material.

Khan was charged with stealing the blueprint from the Netherlands when he was working for Urenco, which was an Anglo-Dutch-German nuclear engineering consortium, and bringing it to Pakistan in 1976.

When he returned to the home country, the then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto placed him in-charge of the uranium enrichment project.

By 1978, his team enriched uranium and were ready to detonate a nuclear device by 1984, Khan said in an interview. In 1998, the country conducted the nuclear test.

(With inputs from agencies)