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AQ Khan died at the age of 85 after being hospitalized with COVID-19.
Also read: After being exposed to COVID-19, Pakistan’s AQ Khan Nuclear Bomber Dies
On December 11, 2003, a group of US CIA and British MI6 officers were about to board an unmarked plane over Libya when they were handed a stack of half a dozen brown envelopes.
The team is at the end of a secret mission that involves tense negotiations with Libyan officials. When they opened the envelope aboard the plane, they found that they had been given the last piece of evidence they needed which contained a design for a nuclear weapon.
The design—as well as many components for the ready-to-use nuclear program—has been supplied by AQ Khan.
Khan is one of the most significant figures in global security in the last half century. The story is at the heart of the battle over the world’s most dangerous technology, the battle between those who have it and those who want it.
Former CIA Director George Tenet described Khan as “at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden”, quite comparable to when Osama bin Laden was behind the September 11, 2001 or 9/11 attacks on the US.
The fact that AQ Khan can be described as one of the most dangerous people in the world by Western spies, but also hailed as a hero in his homeland, tells the world about not only the complexity of the man himself, but also how the world views nuclear weapons.
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