Pakistan: doctor who helped find Osama bin Laden found guilty of treason
5:42 pm - 05/23/2012
By AL ARABIYA WITH REUTERS
A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden has been jailed for 33 years for treason, officials said, a move likely to deepen strains in ties between Washington and Islamabad.
Shakil Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track bin Laden in a Pakistani town, where he was killed in a U.S. special forces raid last May.
“Dr Shakil has been sentenced to 33 years imprisonment and a fine of 320,000 Pakistani rupees ($3,477),” said Mohammad Nasir, a government official in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where the jail term will be served.
The imprisonment is likely to anger ally Washington at a sensitive time, with both sides engaged in difficult talks over re-opening NATO supply routes to U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.
Senior U.S. officials had made public appeals for Pakistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid, to release Afridi, detained after the unilateral operation which killed bin Laden and strained ties with Islamabad.
Afridi is believed to have set up a fake polio vaccination campaign to try and get DNA samples and verify bin Laden’s presence in the compound.
After disclosing Afridi’s role in the operation, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview in January that he was concerned over the Pakistani medic’s criminal charge.
“I’m very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual ... who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation,” Panetta said, according to excerpts of the interview.
“He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan,” the defense secretary said. “Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism ... and for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part.”
But commentators on social media site Twitter referred to the United States’ treatment of Afridi as part of a “use and abuse policy.”
Canadian political activist and author on Islamist attitudes, Tarek Fatah, discussed on Twitter “how [the] U.S. abandoned the Pakistani Doc who helped them locate bin Laden.”
Meanwhile, reports have circulated that the Pakistani government had hoped to resolve the Afridi matter quietly, once media attention died down, by releasing him to U.S. custody even, anonymous Pakistani officials told the Associated Press.
Back in October, a government commission in Pakistan had said that Afridi should be put on trial for “high treason,” a charge which carries the death penalty.
But the question remains whether capital punishment should be the price to pay for assisting the hunt for the notorious bin Laden; mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks which Pakistan had immediately condemned in 2001.
“So what exactly is the Pakistani national interest that has been harmed by Dr. Afridi in helping locate the world’s most wanted terrorist on Pakistani soil?” the Pakistan-based Dawn newspaper wrote in an editorial in October 2011.
“There is an even more distressing aspect to this tale of transnational subterfuge: reportedly, incensed by the American-sponsored ploy, the security apparatus has tightened its monitoring of international aid agencies and local NGOs involved in the health sector, potentially disrupting the urgent work of stamping out the polio virus that has been resurgent in Pakistan in recent years. Must innocent children suffer because of cloak-and-dagger games between states?” the newspaper questioned.
The U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad, just a few hours drive from the capital Islamabad, humiliated Pakistan’s powerful military, which described the move as a violation of sovereignty.
Intelligence cooperation between the United States and Pakistan, vital for the fight against militancy, has subsequently been cut drastically.
Afridi’s prison term could complicate efforts to break a deadlock in talks over the re-opening of supply routes through Pakistan to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Al Arabiya
A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden has been jailed for 33 years for treason, officials said, a move likely to deepen strains in ties between Washington and Islamabad.
Shakil Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track bin Laden in a Pakistani town, where he was killed in a U.S. special forces raid last May.
“Dr Shakil has been sentenced to 33 years imprisonment and a fine of 320,000 Pakistani rupees ($3,477),” said Mohammad Nasir, a government official in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where the jail term will be served.
The imprisonment is likely to anger ally Washington at a sensitive time, with both sides engaged in difficult talks over re-opening NATO supply routes to U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.
Senior U.S. officials had made public appeals for Pakistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid, to release Afridi, detained after the unilateral operation which killed bin Laden and strained ties with Islamabad.
Afridi is believed to have set up a fake polio vaccination campaign to try and get DNA samples and verify bin Laden’s presence in the compound.
After disclosing Afridi’s role in the operation, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview in January that he was concerned over the Pakistani medic’s criminal charge.
“I’m very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual ... who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation,” Panetta said, according to excerpts of the interview.
“He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan,” the defense secretary said. “Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism ... and for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part.”
But commentators on social media site Twitter referred to the United States’ treatment of Afridi as part of a “use and abuse policy.”
Canadian political activist and author on Islamist attitudes, Tarek Fatah, discussed on Twitter “how [the] U.S. abandoned the Pakistani Doc who helped them locate bin Laden.”
Meanwhile, reports have circulated that the Pakistani government had hoped to resolve the Afridi matter quietly, once media attention died down, by releasing him to U.S. custody even, anonymous Pakistani officials told the Associated Press.
Back in October, a government commission in Pakistan had said that Afridi should be put on trial for “high treason,” a charge which carries the death penalty.
But the question remains whether capital punishment should be the price to pay for assisting the hunt for the notorious bin Laden; mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks which Pakistan had immediately condemned in 2001.
“So what exactly is the Pakistani national interest that has been harmed by Dr. Afridi in helping locate the world’s most wanted terrorist on Pakistani soil?” the Pakistan-based Dawn newspaper wrote in an editorial in October 2011.
“There is an even more distressing aspect to this tale of transnational subterfuge: reportedly, incensed by the American-sponsored ploy, the security apparatus has tightened its monitoring of international aid agencies and local NGOs involved in the health sector, potentially disrupting the urgent work of stamping out the polio virus that has been resurgent in Pakistan in recent years. Must innocent children suffer because of cloak-and-dagger games between states?” the newspaper questioned.
The U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad, just a few hours drive from the capital Islamabad, humiliated Pakistan’s powerful military, which described the move as a violation of sovereignty.
Intelligence cooperation between the United States and Pakistan, vital for the fight against militancy, has subsequently been cut drastically.
Afridi’s prison term could complicate efforts to break a deadlock in talks over the re-opening of supply routes through Pakistan to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Al Arabiya
The fact that the US's actions could make it difficult to impossible for NGOs to provide actual polio vaccination is terrifying to me. How many people are going to suffer because of the US intelligence community's games?