Pakistan’s top judge urged to act over ‘CIA doctor’

PESHAWAR: The brother of a doctor jailed in Pakistan for helping the CIA hunt for Osama Bin Laden called on the country’s top judge yesterday to intervene directly to allow a swift appeal.
Shakeel Afridi was found guilty of treason in a secretive tribal court last week and sentenced to 33 years in jail, but his family says the appeal process is being held up because the authorities have yet to release a copy of the conviction.
“I appeal on the chief justice to provide us security and help us exercise our right of appeal,” Jamil Afridi, Shakeel’s elder brother, told a news conference in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The 50-year-old teacher said that Afridi, who stood trial in Khyber tribal district and is in jail in Peshawar, was innocent, loyal and not a traitor.
“My brother is not a traitor, he is a patriot. The sentence is one sided. We will file an appeal against this illegal verdict.” He accused the tribal administration of not releasing the court order.
“They are neither giving us the copy of the order needed to file an appeal, nor have they allowed us to meet Afridi in jail,” he said.
The former government surgeon ran a fake vaccination program designed to collect Bin Laden family DNA from the compound in the town of Abbottabad, where the Al-Qaeda leader was shot dead in a US raid in May 2011.
After his sentencing, a furious Senate Appropriations Committee voted to cut US aid to Pakistan by a symbolic $33 million — $1 million for each year of jail time.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the sentence was “unjust and unwarranted,” saying Afridi was “instrumental in taking down one of the world’s most-wanted murderers.”
On Thursday, jail officials said that Afridi was weak, depressed and suffering from a bad stomach. He had been examined twice by doctors and prescribed medicine, they said.
But local government spokesman insisted yesterday that the prisoner’s health was “alright.”
Drone attack
A US drone attack early yesterday killed at least five militants in a volatile northwestern Pakistan tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said.
The attack took place in Hassokhel town, 25 km east of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, which is a known stronghold of Taleban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.
It was the third such attack in the area since Thursday.
“The US drones targeting a militant compound and a vehicle fired four missiles killing five rebels,” a Pakistani security official said.
The compound came under attack for a second time after some 20 minutes, with US drones firing four more missiles, he said.
Another security official confirmed the attack and casualties, saying the identities of those killed was not known but the area “was known for harboring Uzbek, Arab and other foreign militants.”
Death decree
Meanwhile, four women and two men have been sentenced to death in northern Pakistan for singing and dancing at a wedding, police said yesterday.
Clerics issued a decree after a mobile phone video emerged of the six enjoying themselves in a remote village in the mountainous district of Kohistan, 176 km north of the capital Islamabad.
Pakistani authorities in the area said local clerics had ordered the punishment over allegations that the men and women danced and sang together in Gada village, in defiance of strict tribal customs that separate men and women at weddings.
“The local clerics issued a decree to kill all four women and two men shown in the video,” district police officer Abdul Majeed Afridi said.
“It was decided that the men will be killed first, but they ran away so the women are safe for the moment. I have sent a team to rescue them and waiting to hear some news,” he said, adding that the women had been confined to their homes. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said at least 943 women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honor.
The statistics highlight the scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are frequently treated as second-class citizens.
FROM: AGENCIES