Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the atomic bomb in Pakistan and a national hero to many, died at the age of 85 after testing positive for COVID-19 and being hospitalized several times since August.
The Pakistani nuclear scientist, admired for having made the country the first Islamic nuclear power but accused of having illegally spread technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, died after being transferred to the KRL hospital in Islamabad due to lung problems, according to public television. Pakistani PTV.
Khan had already been hospitalized in August after testing positive for covid. His condition worsened Sunday morning, the chain said.
He became a national hero in May 1998 when the Islamic Republic of Pakistan officially joined the list of atomic military powers, thanks to tests carried out a few days after those of India, its eternal rival.
Many Pakistani personalities expressed their regret at the death of the scientist.
“I am deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. AQ Khan,” Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Twitter, highlighting “his crucial contribution to becoming a nuclear-armed state.”
“For the Pakistani people he was a national icon,” he added.
The prime minister said he will be buried in Islamabad’s Faisal Grand Mosque, as he had requested.
The Interior Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, specified that the burial will take place “with all honors”, in the presence of the government and senior military officials.
The funeral is scheduled for this Sunday at 3:30 p.m. (10:30 GMT). According to Islamic tradition it should be done if possible within 24 hours after death.
– “I saved the country” –
He was admired because thanks to him, Pakistan was able to compete with India in the nuclear field and had an “impregnable” means of defense.
But in February 2004 Khan was placed under house arrest in Islamabad, after being accused of illegally distributing technology in the 1990s.
In February 2004, he acknowledged on television that he had participated in proliferation activities, before backing down. He obtained the pardon of the then president, General Pervez Musharraf.
“I saved the country for the first time when I turned Pakistan into a nuclear state and I saved it again when I recognized it and took full responsibility” for this, Khan told AFP in an interview in 2008.
In 2009, a court ordered his house arrest to end, but he continued to be subjected to strict measures and had to inform the authorities in advance of his every move.
Khan, born on April 1, 1936 in the Indian city of Bhopal, 11 years before the bloody partition of the British Empire that resulted in Pakistan and India in 1947, was also in command of the country’s missile development program.
He graduated from the University of Karachi with a degree in science in 1960 and completed his training in Berlin, the Netherlands and Belgium.
His main contribution to Pakistan’s nuclear program was the design of centrifuges, which enriched uranium to a concentration rate suitable for weapons.
He was accused of having stolen this technology from the Netherlands, when he was working in the country for the Urenco consortium. Upon his return to Pakistan, then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto appointed him as head of the national uranium enrichment program.
In 1978 his team managed to enrich him and in 1984 they were prepared to set off an atomic bomb, Khan later revealed in an interview.
In a 1990 speech, he acknowledged that the necessary elements were procured abroad. “It was not possible for us to manufacture everything in the country,” he said.
After the first atomic tests in 1998, in response to those of India, he assured that Islamabad “never wanted to make atomic weapons, it was forced to do so” by the need for deterrence.
None of the controversies in which he was embroiled marred his great popularity in Pakistan, where colleges, universities, and hospitals bear his name and his portrait illustrates posters, objects and web pages.
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