Reign of the nuclear 'emperor'

Even Mohammed Shahabuddin Ghauri, the 13th century ruler of Delhi from whom Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan claims descent would be astonished at the luxurious life style that Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist has enjoyed for the past 30 years.

Khan has repeatedly boasted to friends and family of his royal connections, allegedly stretching back to Ghauri, after whom Pakistan has also named its ballistic missiles bought from North Korea.

But all the gold that Ghauri looted from his South Asian subjects are no match for the privileges and cash amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars that have slipped through Khan's fingers over the past 30 years.

Some of the privileges allotted to him by the Pakistan government may now be revoked after Khan's televised confession last week that he authorised the export of nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. The script of the carefully prepared confession broadcast on Pakistani television was always expected to win the pardon that Khan pleaded for.

Now, it remains to be seen how much of the scientist's wheeling and dealing in nuclear components that underpins his financial and real estate empire will be exposed to public scrutiny.

The "assets" of this uncrowned nuclear emperor have included a Pakistan Air Force-supplied C-130 transport aircraft that was available to Khan on a 24-hour basis to take him anywhere he wanted to in the world. In the early days, when this aircraft was first allocated, it was used to fly in parts of uranium centrifuges and other components deemed vital for Pakistan's expanding nuclear weapons programme.

Over a period of time, this became Khan's personal aircraft. He used it to fly around the country to boost his image as Pakistan's saviour. The C-130 with its massive storage space was also used to fly antique furniture from Pakistan to embellish his latest property investment in Timbuktu, the Hendrina Khan Hotel, named after his South African-born wife.

When one of his daughters was getting married, the C-130 crew duly obliged Khan once again by flying in a $400,000 tent made of Teflon from Florida. More than anything else it was this aircraft, Khan's private flying chariot, that upset some of the scientist's younger colleagues who were enraged that the "father" of Pakistan's bomb should misuse his position to enrich himself at his country's expense.

They systematically leaked information to journalists and selected members of the Pakistani opposition on the man whom admirers have likened to Albert Einstein, while others have compared to the former East German nuclear spy Klaus Fuchs.

Among Khan's disillusioned colleagues are nine engineers from the Chashma nuclear power plant who have downed tools and simply disappeared to better paid jobs in other parts of the world.

Families of these highly trained experts have revealed they often worked a 90-hour week for a pittance. Their salaries and working conditions were a joke compared to the regal life style of "emperor" Khan. Not for them the use of a private aircraft, the army of servants, or the bottomless pit of cash that the "father" of the country's nuclear programme has enjoyed so consistently and for so long.

Bhopal, Indian born Khan was 16 years old when he migrated to Pakistan in 1952, five years after independence, swearing at the local police as he crossed the land border at Rajasthan. This self-hating Indian emigrant explained himself in a subsequent interview published in Pakistan by telling how he had personally witnessed trains pulling into Bhopal railway station filled with the bodies of Muslims killed during Partition.

He has claimed that it was these memories that propelled him across the border where he also plotted his strategy to extract revenge against the country he had abandoned. But first he had to get an education.

Backed by Pakistani government scholarships, he first managed to obtain a place at the Techjnische Universitat in West Berlin. Later, between 1963-1967, he obtained a metallurgical engineering degree from the Technical University of Delft in Holland. Three years later he completed his studies with a Ph.d in metallurgy from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

His mentor at Leuven, Professor Martin Brabers, remembers him as competent, outgoing, charming and likeable. It was Brabers too who helped Khan get his first job after graduating and that, fortuitously, also gave him the key to unlock Pakistan's nuclear programme.

This first job was at the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory in Amsterdam, a specialised engineering firm known as FDO, that was putting together an elite team for a special project jointly funded by the governments of Britain, West Germany and the Netherlands.

Their Urenco consortium based in the town of Almelo in Holland was formed to break the US monopoly in producing highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel. Highly enriched uranium is also used for making nuclear bombs, so when Khan joined FDO, the company serving as consultants to the high-tech process, he found himself at the right place at the right time to get the secrets that Pakistan needed.

Although much of the work was classified as restricted and confidential, Khan was given security clearance and access to the FDO "brain box" because he was married to a South African-born Dutch woman and had announced he planned to settle down permanently in the Netherlands.

Financed by Pakistan's intelligence operatives in Europe, and trained by them as well, he systematically stole classified data and had it shipped back to Pakistan where it was used to replicate uranium enrichment technology at the Kahuta Research Centre near Islamabad.

Pakistan was still licking its wounds from the 1971 war when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was told that India was close to testing its first nuclear device. At a hastily convened meeting of top scientists in Multan, Bhutto asked who could help him get a nuclear bomb for Pakistan.

Step forward Dr. Khan, who happened to be back home on holiday from his work at the FDO "brain box" in Amsterdam.

An insight into how Khan operated was provided last week by a former Dutch colleague, Frits Veerman, who shared office space with Khan in Amsterdam, and whose book in Dutch called Atoomspionage gives his version of the whole scandal.

Veerman, who was employed as a technical photographer by FDO has told Gulf News during an interview at his home in Amsterrdam how he saw classified blue folders filled with confidential papers lying about in Khan's home.

It is Veerman's contention that Khan's marriage to a Dutch woman, Hendrina, and his mastery of three European languages, English, German and Dutch, facilitated his access to confidential data that would otherwise have been off limits to him.

Just how dependant Khan had become on the blueprints and components he stole from his employers is revealed from some of the letters he wrote to Veerman soon after he fled to Pakistan from Holland in 1976, using the plea of contracting yellow fever when on holiday to justify his initial absence.

Khan's departure may have been because his cover was blown or presumably the time was right to start constructing the centrifuge plant in Pakistan.