ISLAMABAD: Abdul Qadeer Khan, who died Sunday, was lauded in Pakistan for transforming it into the world’s first Islamic nuclear weapons power. The nuclear scientist, who died at 85 in Islamabad after recently being hospitalised with Covid-19, was revered as “the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb”. But he found himself in the crosshairs of controversy when he was accused of illegally proliferating nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. On his return to Pakistan, then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto put Khan in charge of the government’s nascent uranium enrichment project. “I was not independent but was bound to abide by the orders of the prime minister,” he was quoted as saying.

Source: Pakistan Today October 10, 2021 08:15 UTC