Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan

Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, accused in the West of nuclear espionage, is Pakistan's nuclear hero as architect of the country's newly-declared nuclear prowess. He is the brains behind what has been a mysterious and controversial nuclear programme whose latest products are five bombs tested on Thursday and at least one on Saturday - in response to five exploded by arch-rival India this month. He is also the father of Pakistan's medium-range Ghauri missile, test-fired last month and which is said by officials to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads and hitting most Indian cities.


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A scion of a modest family from India's Bhopal state who loves poetry, flowers and animals, he is caught in the subcontinent's current nuclear standoff that has rung alarm bells across the globe. Khan, 62, migrated to Pakistan in 1952, following millions of other Muslims who came here from India at the subcontinent's partition at independence from Britain in 1947. After initial graduation in the port city of Karachi, he went to Europe in 1952 for further studies and subsequent work that was later to become the basis of his trial and conviction in the Netherlands on espionage charges.

Former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto urged Khan to return home in 1976 to be given the job to organise Pakistan's nuclear programme that could give an answer to India's first nuclear explosion of 1974.

"It was...to be precise, on July 31, 1976, when the first seeds, real seeds of Pakistan's nuclear programme were sown," Khan recalled in one of his newspaper articles.

"The date marks the turn in our beloved country's destiny as it was on this fateful day that under the banner of 'Engineering Research Laboratories,' an autonomous organisation was formed under the orders of the late prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto...." The aim of the secret laboratories, set up at Kahuta, near Islamabad, was to "establish a uranium enrichment plant and provide Pakistan with nuclear capability," he wrote.

"In a record short span of six years, Pakistan was put on the nuclear map of the world and a solid foundation was laid for our self-sufficiency in future of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy."

Before returning home, Khan worked at the British/German/Dutch Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the Netherlands in the early 1970s. After his return, a Dutch security enquiry revealed he had probably taken with him most of the