Abdul Qadeer Khan

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Abdul Qadeer Khan, NI, HI, FPAS (born April 1, 1936), a Pakistani columnist, nuclear physicist, and a metallurgical engineer who developed the uranium enrichment scheme for Pakistan's atomic bomb program.

In 1976, AQ Khan founded and established the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL), serving as both a senior scientist and Chairman until he resigned in 2001.

Khan was also involved in other Pakistani national science projects, contributing to molecular morphology, condensed matter physics, and materials physics. After the US provided evidence of it to the Pakistanis, the Pakistani government summoned Khan for a debriefing on his active involvement in nuclear weapons proliferation in other countries in January 2004.

Khan confirmed his involvement in these activities a month later.

Khan's activities were denied by the Pakistani government after years of official house arrest during and after his debriefing, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) declared Abdul Qadeer Khan to be a Pakistani civilian, allowing him free movement throughout the region.

Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Aslam delivered the decision.

The United States warned Khan still poses a "serious proliferation threat" in September 2009, after the decision also lifted all security restrictions on Khan.

Early life and education

Abdul Qadeer Khan was born in Bhopal, a city then in the erstwhile British princely state of Bhopal, and now Madhya Pradesh's capital city. His family is of Urdu-speaking Pashtun origins. Abdul Ghafoor, his father, and his mother, Zulekha, were both a schoolteacher and a teacher with a strong religious outlook. His older siblings and other relatives immigrated to Pakistan during the bloody partition of India (splitting off the independent state of Pakistan) in 1947, and Khan would often inform Khan's parents about the new life they had discovered in Pakistan.

Khan emigrated from India to Pakistan on the Sind Mail train in 1952, partly because of the reservation system, which was at 254 at the time, and religious unrest in India during his youth, leaving an indelible impression on his world view. Khan briefly attended the D. J. while settling in Karachi with his family. Before moving to the University of Karachi, where he graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in physics with a concentration on solid-state physics.

Khan served as an Inspector of weights and measures from 1956 to 1959, and he applied for a scholarship that enabled him to study in West Germany. Khan left West Berlin in 1961 to study material science at the Technical University in West Berlin, where he academically excelled in metallurgicy but left West Berlin when he moved to Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Hendrina "Henny" Reternik, a British passport holder who had been born in South Africa to Dutch expatriates, met him in 1962 while on vacation in The Hague. She spoke Dutch and had spent her childhood in Africa before returning to the Netherlands as a registered foreigner. He married Henny in a modest Muslim celebration at Pakistan's embassy in The Hague in 1963. Dina Khan, a doctor, and Ayesha Khan were both children with Khan and Henny together, as well as Ayesha Khan, a scientist.

Khan earned an engineer's degree in materials science (MS) in English-speaking countries such as Pakistan, and joined the Katholie University Leuven in Belgium, where he earned a doctorate in metallurgical engineering. He worked at Leuven University, who supervised his doctoral thesis, which Khan successfully defended, and graduated with a degree in metallurgical engineering in 1972. His thesis included research on martensite and its expanded industrial uses in the field of graphene morphology.

Proliferation controversy

Despite the government's acceptance of PAEC's arguments for long-term survival of the nuclear program, Khan had been very vocal about creating a network to obtain imported electronic components from the Dutch firms and had little confidence in PAEC's domestic manufacturing of weapons. 148 At one point, Khan reached out to the People's Republic of China for obtaining the uranium hexafluoride (UF6) while attending a conference, urging KRL to use the UF6 supplied by PAEC. 151–151 In an investigative report released by Nuclear Threat Initiative, Chinese scientists were reportedly present at Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) in Kahuta in the early 1980s. The US intelligence service maintained in 1996 that China made magnetic rings for special suspension bearings mounted at the top of rotating centrifuge cylinders. It was revealed in 2005 that President Zia-ul-Haq's military team had KRL implemented a HEU program in China's nuclear program. "KRL has constructed a centrifuge plant for China in Hanzhong city," Khan said. Some of the DF-11's ballistic missile technologies were also exported to Pakistan, where Pakistan's Ghaznavi and Shaheen-II borrowed from the DF-11 technology.

In 1982, an unidentified Arab country called on Khan for the supply of centrifuge technologies. Khan was keen on the financial offer, but one scientist alerted the Zia administration, but only for Khan to refuse such a bid. The Zia government had ordered Major-General Ali Nawab, an engineering officer, to keep track of Khan, which he did not do after 1984, and Khan's activities went undetected for many years after.

Khan was eventually investigated by the Dutch government on suspicion of nuclear espionage, but the government did not bring a criminal complaint against him in 1985, which sentenced him in absentia to four years in jail. Khan's lawyer, S. M. Zafar, who collaborated with Leuven University's administration and argued that the scientific evidence requested by Khan was commonly found and taught in undergraduate and doctoral physics at the university, was exonerated by the court by overturning Khan's sentence on a procedural basis. 35, Khan said, "I had requested for it because we didn't have a library of our own at KRL at the time." All the research [at Kahuta] was the result of our ingenuity and inability. We did not receive any technological expertise from abroad, but we can't avoid using books, journals, and research papers in this connection."

When the Zia administration, which was attempting to keep their nuclear capabilities private in the hopes of avoiding pressure from the Reagan administration of the United States (U.S.), nearly lost its patience with Khan when he reportedly tried to speak with a local journalist to reveal the existence of the enrichment program. 82 Khan gave another interview to local media in 1987 during the Indian Operation Brasstacks military drill, saying, "the Americans were fully aware of the success of the atomic quest of Pakistan." Previously, the speculation of technology exportation was denied. At both instances, the Zia administration vehemently denied Khan's remarks and a tense President Zia met with Khan and used a "tough tone," promising Khan severe repercussions if he did not retract any of his remarks, which Khan immediately did by contacting several news reporters.

Despite Benazir Bhutto's administration's agreement with the US Clinton administration to limit the program to 3% enrichment in 1996, Khan appeared on his country's news channels once more.

The invention and improved designs of centrifuges were listed by the Pakistan government as export restricted, although Khan was still carrying earlier centrifuge designs from 1970 to 1970. 156–158 In 1990, the United States suspected that sensitive data was being sent to North Korea in exchange for rocket engines. As shown in the technology, Pakistan's Ghauri missile was based solely on North Korea's Rodong-1. Benazir Bhutto, who consulted for the project with North Korea and facilitated the technology transfer to Khan Research Laboratories in 1993, was involved in the venture.

Khan denied allegations that Benazir Bhutto's administration of secret enrichment information, on a compact disc (CD), to North Korea on several occasions; Benazir Bhutto's employees and military forces denied this assertion.

: 113–114

Khan leaked information of centrifuges to Iran from 1987 to 1989, without notifying the Pakistan Government, despite the fact that the subject of political controversy. The European Union pressed Iran to perform tougher inspections of its nuclear program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported an enrichment center in Natanz, Iran, which uses gas centrifuges based on URENCO's designs and methods. Inspectors from the IAEA quickly identified the centrifuges as P-1 styles, which had been purchased "from a foreign intermediary in 1989," and Iranian negotiators quickly turned over the names of their suppliers, including Khan as one of them. Heinz Mebus, a German engineer and businessman and college friend of Khan, was named as one of the company's top prospects, acting as a middleman for Khan.

Newsweek announced in May 1998 that Khan had delivered Iraq centrifuge designs, which had apparently been confiscated by UNMOVIC officials. "The documents were legitimate, but not ready to work with A. Q. Khan," Iraqi officials said, fearing an ISI sting operation due to tense relations between the two countries.

Through Khan's Dubai-based Sri Lankan associate Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, merchant vessel BBC China was discovered carrying nuclear centrifuges to Libya from Malaysia, the Scomi Group, and Khan Research Laboratories were exporting nuclear parts to Libya. This was even more revealed in the Scomi Precision Engineering nuclear case involving Scomi CEO Shah Hakim Zain and Kamaluddin Abdullah, the son of former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Libya negotiated with the US to lift its nuclear program to have economic sanctions lifted, as part of the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, and exported centrifuges to the US that were identified as P-1 models by the American inspectors. When Libya gave over a list of its suppliers, the Bush administration launched its investigation into Khan, focusing on his personal conduct. Friedrich Tinner, a nuclear engineer and friend of Khan who attended Leuven University, was one of Libya's nuclear program's chiefs and spent time in nuclear enrichment for Libya and Pakistan. Gotthard Lerch, a German nuclear engineer, was found guilty and sentenced to five years and six months in jail for supplying centrifuges for Libya from Khan. Lerch has also served as Khan's middleman for Iran in 2008. Alfred Hempel, a German businessman, arranged the transport of gas centrifuge parts from Khan in Pakistan to Libya and Iran via Dubai.

Many shell companies set-up by Khan in Dubai to obtain the equipment required for nuclear enrichment. Through China, Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group of Iran's Defense Industries Organization was instrumental in nuclear proliferation for Iran and North Korea. Khan had previously imported parts of Pakistan's nuclear enrichment.

Khan served as an advisor on science and technology in the Musharraf administration and had an increasing presence in the political sphere of his country. According to reports, the Bush administration in 2003 turned over evidence of a nuclear proliferation network that implicated Khan's service to the Musharraf administration. Khan was fired from his post on January 31, 2004. Khan confessed to operating a proliferation bandwagon between 1989 and 1991, and North Korea and Libya between 1991 and 1997. The Musharraf administration avoided arresting Khan, but instead held security hearings on Khan, who admitted to the military prosecutors that former Chief of Army Staff General Mirza Aslam Beg had been given permission for technology transfer to Iran.

President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan on February 5, 2004, fearing that the issue would be politiciized by his political adversaries, he released a pardon on February 5th. Despite the pardon, Khan, who had a strong conservative support, had a significant effect on the Musharraf administration's image and the image of the US, which was trying to win hearts and minds of local populations during the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa rebellion. Although local television news networks carried sympathetic documentaries on Khan, opposition parties in the region raged so strongly that the US Embassy in Islamabad had warned the Bush administration that Musharraf's successor could be less welcoming toward the US. Due to a tactical decision that might result in Musharraf's departure as an ally, the Bush administration was hesitant to apply more direct pressure on Musharraf. Khan could not have acted alone "without the knowledge of the Pakistan Government," the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC), led by Hans Blix, said in December 2006. Blix's speech was also acknowledged by the US government, with one anonymous American government intelligence official quoted by independent journalist and author Seymour Hersh's comment: "Suppose if Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology around the world." Could he do that without being aware of the American government? "Irmo grew to be a bigote. "

Given the persistent skepticism regarding Khan's allegations, IAEA officials, as well as IAEA officials, received several calls in 2007 to have him interviewed by IAEA investigators, but Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who remained enthusiastic about him and said nothing about him, dismissed the calls by saying "case closed."

The security hearings were officially ended by Chairman joint chiefs GM Tariq Majid, who referred to the debriefings as "classified" in 2008. Khan retaliated against former President Pervez Musharraf in 2008, naming Musharraf as the "Big Boss" for proliferation negotiations in an interview. Khan also accused Benazir Bhutto's administration in proliferation issues in 2012, implying that she had issued "clear directions in this [s] regard."

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Career in Europe

Khan started the Physics Dynamics Research Laboratory (VMF), an engineering company subsidiary of Verenigde Machinefabrieken (VMF) based in Amsterdam in 1972, following Brabers' recommendation. The FDO, a subcontractor for Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland of the United Kingdom-Dutch uranium enrichment consortium, was contracted by the British-German-Dutch uranium enrichment group, URENCO, which was operating a uranium enrichment plant in Almelo and employed a gaseous centrifuge technology to ensure a supply of nuclear fuel for Dutch nuclear power plants. Khan left FDO soon after, when URENCO offered him a senior scientific position, soon after conducting research on the uranium metallurgigy.

: 87

Uranium enrichment is a difficult process because uranium in its original state is made of only 0.1% of uranium-238 (U2358), which is non-fissile, and 0.005 percent of uranium-234 (U234), a cousin product that is also a non-fissile. The URENCO Group analyzed the isotopes U234, U235, and U238 from sublime raw uranium by rotaryning the uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at speeds of up to 70,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). Khan, 49, whose work was based on physical metallurgy of the uranium metal, continued his experiments on increasing the centrifuges' effectiveness by 1973–74.

: 140

Frits Veerman, Khan's colleague, exposed nuclear espionage at Almelo, where Khan had stolen centrifuges from URENCO for Pakistan's nuclear program. When Khan had taken classified URENCO papers home to be copied and translated by his Dutch-speaking wife, Veerman became aware of the spyship and had asked Veerman to photograph some of them. Khan was moved to a less vulnerable place in 1975 as URENCO became suspicious, and he and his wife and two children later returned to Pakistan. Khan was sentenced in absentia to four years in jail in 1983 by the Netherlands for espionage, but the conviction was later dismissed due to a technicality. Later, Ruud Lubbers, the Netherlands Prime Minister at the time, confirmed that the GC Intelligence and Security Service (BVD) was aware of Khan's spying but that the CIA did not permit him to continue because the US backed Pakistan during the Cold War. Despite Archie Pervez (Khan's associate for nuclear procurement in the United States) being convicted in 1988, no action was taken against Khan or his proliferation network by the US government, which needed Pakistan's assistance during the Soviet-Afghan War.

Henk Slebos, a Dutch engineer and businessman who had studied metallurgy with Khan at the Delft University of Technology, continues to produce the urgy enriching uranium to Khan in Pakistan through his company Slebos Research. In 1985, Slebos was sentenced to one year in jail, but the case was appealed in 1986 to six months of probation and a fine of 20,000 guilders. Despite this, Slebos continued to export products to Pakistan and was sentenced to one year in jail and fine of around €100,000 was levied on his firm.

Ernst Piffl was found guilty of supplying nuclear centrifuge parts through his company Team GmbH to Khan's Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta in 1998. Through Humayun Khan (an associate of A. Q. Khan) and his Pakland PME Corporation, Asher Karni, a Hungarian-South African businessman, was sentenced to three years in prison in the United States for the export of restricted nuclear equipment to Pakistan.

Scientific career in Pakistan

Following learning of India's surprise nuclear drill, 'Smiling Buddha,' in May 1974, Khan wanted to contribute to the efforts to create an atomic bomb and spoke with officials at the Pakistani Embassy in The Hague, who told him that finding a job in PAEC as a "metallurgist" was "impossible." Khan wrote a letter in August 1974 that went unnoticed, but he wrote another letter through the Pakistani ambassador to the Prime Minister's Secretariat in September 1974. 144 replies.

Khan's unconcernedly, the country's scientists were already planning the atomic bomb under a shadowy war program that has been running for decades since 20 January 1972, which puts the "father-of" claim into doubt. 72 After reading his letter, Prime Minister Bhutto ordered that his security check on Khan, who was unidentified at the time, be conducted for confirmation, prompting PAEC to send a team under Bashiruddin Mahmood that met Khan at his family's house in Almelo and requested that Bhutto's letter be delivered to him in Islamabad. 141 On his arrival in December 1974, Khan took a taxi straight to the Prime Minister's Secretariat. He spoke with Prime Minister Bhutto in the presence of Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Agha Shahi, and Mubashir Hassan, where he discussed the importance of highly enriched uranium, with the meeting coming to an end with Bhutto's words: "He seems to make sense."

": 140–141 : 60–61

Khan met with Munir Ahmad and other senior scientists on the next day to discuss how enriched uranium (HEU), which is opposed to weapon-grade plutonium, would not work, and he told Bhutto why the theory of "plutonium" would not work. 143–144 Later, Khan was advised by several senior officials in the Bhutto administration to stay in the Netherlands to learn more about centrifuge technology but also to provide information on Mahmood's Project-706 enrichment scheme. 143–144 By December 1975, Khan was moved to a less vulnerable area as URENCO became suspicious of his indiscreet open sessions with Mahmood, instructing him on centrifuge technology. Khan began to be concerned about his safety in the Netherlands and then vowed to return home.

: 147

Khan joined the atomic bomb program in 1976 and became a component of the enrichment division, first collaborating with Khalil Quanthi, a physical chemist. 62–63 Calculations were valuable to centrifuges and a vital link to nuclear weapon development, but even though most attempts were set to produce military-grade plutonium, he continued to push for his proposals for weapon-grade uranium. 73-74 Khan refused to participate in further calculations and caused tensions with other researchers due to his ardent interest in uranium metallurgy and his sadness at being passed over for director of the uranium division. 147–148 Khan became dissatisfied and dissatisfied with Mahmood's study, which later delivered a critical report to Bhutto, in which he said that the "enrichment initiative" was nowhere near success.

: 62–63

On reading the paper, Bhutto felt a great risk when the scientists were split between military-grade uranium and plutonium, and Khan was advised to take over the enrichment branch from Mahmood, who separated the service from PAEC by establishing the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL). 149–150 The ERL operated directly under the Army's Corps of Engineers, with Khan as the chief scientist, and the army engineers locating the national site in Kahuta for the enrichment program as the ideal location for preventing accidents.

Even though Alam had not seen a centrifuge and only had a cursorily understanding of the Manhattan Project, the PAEC did not forego their electromagnetic isotope separation service, and G. D. Alam at the Air Research Laboratories (ARL) in Chablala's Base did not forego their electronic isotope separation service, and a parallel program was launched by G. D. Alam at the Air Research Laboratories (ARL) located at the Manhattan's 72–110 : 144 Alam achieved a major feat during this period by expertly balancing the rotation of the first generation of centrifuges to 30,000 rpm and being sent immediately by ERL, which was suffering from several failures in establishing a company under Khan's leadership based on centrifuge technology based on URENCO's methods. Khan and Alam succeeded in isotope separation from raw natural uranium, with 75-76 Khan eventually committing to work on problems involving the differential equations surrounding the rotation around a fixed axis to precisely balance the machine under pressure of gravity and the design of the first generation of centrifuges.

: 78–79

Khan's scientific abilities were well known, and his moniker "Centrifuge Khan" was often used in military circles: 151 and the national laboratory was renamed after he visited President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1983. Despite his position, Khan was never in charge of the actual product designs, their estimation, and eventual weapons testing, which was still under Munir Ahmad Khan's and the PAEC's supervision.

Senior scientists who worked with him and under his supervision referred to him as "an egomaniacal jerk" for exaggerating his scientific accomplishments in centrifuges. "Most of the scientists who work on atomic bomb projects were extremely'serious,' Munir Khan said at one point. They were sobbed by the weight of what they don't know; Abdul Qadeer Khan is a showman." Khan published papers on the balancing of rotating masses and thermodynamics with mathematical rigour to compete, but he didn't fail to impress his colleagues at PAEC, primarily in the physics department. Khan became a ferocious critic of Munir Khan's theoretical work, and on several occasions attempted to dismiss Munir Khan's participation in the atomic bomb programs. Their scientific rivalry became well known in the physics community and became extremely popular in the country's seminars over the years.

Many of his theorists were uncertain that military-grade uranium would be available on time without the centrifuges, since Alam had warned PAEC that the "blueprints were incomplete" and "lacked the scientific evidence that was even for the basic gas-centrifuges. "74–76": calculated by Tasneem Shah, and reported by Alam, Khan's earlier estimate of the quantity of uranium required enrichment for the production of weapon-grade uranium was correct, even with the small number of centrifuges.

: 77

Khan stole the centrifuges from URENCO. However, they were plagued with significant design defects, and although he obtained some components for study, they were missing pieces, rendering them unusable for quick assembly of a centrifuge. According to Alam, it was extremely low, so it would have to be replaced for thousands of RPMs at the expense of millions of taxpayers money. Despite Khan's knowledge of copper metallurgy greatly enhanced the development of centrifuges, it was the calculations and validation that came from his team of fellow theorists, including mathematician Tasneem Shah and Alam, who figured out the differential equations concerning rotation around a rectangular axis under the influence of gravity, which led to his discovery of the latest centrifuge designs.

: 146

Khan would not have come any closer to achieving without the support of Alam and others, according to scientists. Both Shah and Alam refused because the issue is controversial; 79 Khan maintained to his biographer that when it came to defending the "centrifuge strategy" and more actively putting effort into it.

: 79–80

Khan was also highly critical of PAEC's concentrated attempts to produce plutonium-implosion-type nuclear weapons, and he later submitted a criticism of the relatively straightforward 'gun-type' weapon that only needed to work with high-enriched uranium. 152 Khan downplayed the significance of plutonium, though several of the theorists maintained that "plutonium and the fuel cycle have their semblance," and he maintained that the uranium route to the Bhutto administration was offing when France's bid for an extraction plant was in jeopardy.

Despite the fact that he helped develop the centrifuge designs and had been a long-serving proponent of the theory, Khan was not chosen to lead the initiative to put on the nation's first nuclear weapons (his reputation as a thorny celebrity likely played a role in this) after India conducted a series of nuclear experiments, 'Pokhran-III' in 1998. General Jehangir Karamat, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, allowed Khan to participate in and witness his country's first nuclear drill, 'Chagai-I', in 1998. Khan confirmed the testing of the upgraded fission units at a news conference, while simultaneously stating that it was KRL's highly enriched uranium (HEU) used in the detonation of Pakistan's first nuclear units on May 28.

Many of Khan's coworkers were furious that he seemed to enjoy being praised for something he had no involvement in, and he wrote an article entitled "Torch-Bearers" in response, claiming that he was not alone in the weapon's production. He tried to work on the Teller–Ulam construction for the hydrogen bomb but the government's policy of minimum credible deterrence was denied. 108 Khans were immersed in programmes that were theoretically exciting but not necessarily feasible.

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