Pakistani doctor jailed for helping CIA find Bin Laden

PESHAWAR: Pakistan has sentenced Dr. Shakil Afridi to 33 years rigorous imprisonment on treason charges. He has been charged with spying for the Americans that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2 last year.
Afridi, a resident of Khyber Agency in Bara, is a medical doctor who conducted a fake polio drive in Abbottabad in order to collect DNA samples that led US authorities to Bin Laden's hide-out.
Afridi was also fined by the political administration of Khyber tribal agency under Section 121 of Frontier Crimes Regulations 1864.
Under the law, Afridi cannot appeal conviction and only the president of Pakistan can grant clemency.
Afridi was cultivated by "Save The Children,"an European NGO that funded him to carry out the fake polio campaign in Abbottabad. "I was contacted by "Save The Children" and I met Michael in Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar where we finalized the entire plan of collecting DNA samples of Bin Laden family. The samples were confirmed by the US Embassy in Islamabad after cross matching them," said Afridi in his confessional statement.
Afridi, along with his family members, was given US nationality and that was the reason why the US has officially demanded Pakistan to hand him over to the US authorities.
The Abbottabad Commission headed by former Supreme Court Judge Justice Javed Iqbal ordered the government to put Afridi's name on the exit control list and try him under treason charges.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already made a phone call to President Zardari for his release but Pakistan has refused to hand over Afridi.
Intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arab News that several foreign NGOs were involved in activities that are not in Pakistan's national interests. "Confessional statement by Afridi has given solid proof of such activities by European-funded NGOs," they said.
Afridi conducted three fake vaccination campaigns in different areas in search of OBL and his family.
His wife, Imrana Ghafoor, former head of Government Girls College in Darra Adam Khel tribal region went missing some time back and is said to have flown to US along with three children.
Bin Laden's long presence in Pakistan despite the worldwide manhunt for him raised suspicions in Washington that Pakistani intelligence officials may have sheltered him.
Pakistani officials deny this and say an intelligence gap enabled Bin Laden to live here undetected. No one has yet been charged for helping the Al-Qaeda leader take refuge in Pakistan. A government commision tasked with investigating how he managed to evade capture by Pakistani authorities for so long is widely accused of being ineffective.
Senior US officials had made public appeals for Pakistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid, to release Afridi.
In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that Afridi and his team had been key in finding Bin Laden, describing him as helpful and insisting the doctor had not committed treason or harmed Pakistan.
US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher introduced legislation in February calling for Afridi to be granted American citizenship and said it was "shameful and unforgivable that our supposed allies" charged him.
Afridi's prison term could complicate efforts to break a deadlock in talks over the re-opening of land routes through Pakistan to US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, which are crucial for supplies.
Pakistan closed the supply routes in protest against last November's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO air attack along the Afghan border.
Seventeen health workers who worked with Afridi on the vaccination drive were fired in March, according to termination letters seen by Reuters. On May 2, one year after Bin Laden's death, some of them appeared at the site where Bin Laden's run-down white cement and brick house stood before it was demolished by Pakistani authorities.