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Biography of Abdul Qadeer Khan who made a nuclear bomb for Pakistan

Abdul Qadeer Khan also known as AQ Khan born April 1st 1936 Bhopal India Pakistani engineer a key figure in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program who was also involved for decades in a black market of nuclear technology and know-how whereby uranium enrichment centrifuges nuclear warhead designs missiles and expertise were sold or traded to Iran North Korea Libya and possibly other countries in 1947 during Abdul Qadeer Kahn's childhood India achieved independence from Britain and Muslim areas in the east and west were partitioned to form the state of Pakistan. Abdul Qadeer Khan immigrated to West Pakistan in 1952 and in 1960 he graduated from the University of Karachi with a degree in metallurgy over the next decade he pursued graduate studies abroad first in West Berlin and then in delft Netherlands where in 1967 he received a master's degree in metallurgy in 1972 he earned a doctorate in metallurgical engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium meanwhile in 1964. He married Henry Nora Turing a British national who had been born to Dutch expatriate parents in South Africa and raised in what was then Northern Rhodesia now Zambia before moving to the Netherlands. In the spring of 1972 Abdul Qadeer Khan was hired by physical dynamics Research Laboratory a subcontractor of the Dutch partner of ure NCO ,a consortium of British German and Dutch companies was established in 1971 to research and develop uranium enrichment through the use of ultra-centrifuges which has centrifuges that operated extremely high speeds. Abdul Qadeer Khan was granted a low-level security clearance but through lax oversight he gained access to a full range of information on ultra-centrifuge technology and visited the Dutch plant at Ulm alone many times. One of his jobs was to translate German documents on advanced centrifuges into Dutch Cohn was heavily influenced by events back home notably. Pakistan's humiliating defeat in a brief war with India in 1971 the subsequent loss of East Pakistan through the creation of a newly independent country Bangladesh and India's test of a nuclear explosive device in May 1974. On September 17 -1974 Abdul Qadeer Khan wrote to Pakistan's prime minister so far car a li Bhutto offering his assistance in preparing an atomic bomb in the letter he offered the opinion that the uranium route to the bomb using centrifuges from enrichment was better than the plutonium path already under way in Pakistan which relied on nuclear reactors and reprocessing Bhutto met Abdul Qadeer Khan in December 1974 and encouraged him to do everything he could to help Pakistan attain the bomb. Over the next year Abdul Qadeer Khan stole drawings of centrifuges and assembled a list of mainly European suppliers where parts could be procured on December 15 -1975. He left the Netherlands for Pakistan accompanied by his wife and two daughters and carrying his blueprint copies and suppliers list. Abdul Qadeer Khan initially worked with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission PAEC but differences arose with its head Munir Ahmad khan in mid-1970s direction confounded the engineering research laboratory or l for the purpose of developing a uranium enrichment capability. In May 1981 the laboratory was renamed the Khan research laboratory or KRL Khan's base of operations was in Cohutta 50 kilometres 30 miles southeast of Islamabad there Kant developed prototype centrifuges based on German designs and used his suppliers list to import essential components from Swiss Dutch British and German companies among others in the early 1980s Pakistan acquired from China the blueprints of a nuclear weapon that used a uranium implosion design that the Chinese had successfully tested in 1966. It is generally believed that the Chinese tested a derivative design for the Pakistanis on May 26, 1990 can having satisfied Pakistan's needs for its own uranium weapon began in the mid-1980s to create front companies in Dubai, Malaysia and elsewhere and through these entities he covertly sold or traded centrifuges components designs and expertise in an extensive black market network. The customers included Iran which went on to build a uranium enrichment complex based on the Pakistani model. Abdul Qadeer Khan visited North Korea at least 13 times and is suspected of having transferred enrichment technology to that country his laboratory also developed Pakistan's ballistic missile with help from the North Koreans. Libya supplied by Abdul Qadeer Khan embarked upon a nuclear weapons program until it was interrupted by the United States in 2003 on January 31st, 2004 Khan was arrested for transferring nuclear technology to other countries on February 4th, he read a statement on Pakistani television taking full responsibility for his operations and absolving the military and government of any involvement. A claim that many nuclear experts found difficult to believe. The next day he was pardoned by Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf but he was held under house arrest until 2009. Abdul Qadeer Khan's critics particularly in the West expressed dismay at such lenient treatment of a man whom one observer called the greatest nuclear proliferator of all time. For many Pakistanis however Abdul Qadeer Khan remains a symbol of pride a hero whose contributions strengthened Pakistan's national security against India.