Shakil Afridi is the man who helped US Navy Seals track down and kill the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Details of his activities emerged during the Pakistani investigation of the deadly raid on bin Laden’s residence.
Afridi used a fake hepatitis vaccination program to try to get DNA samples from Bin Laden’s family as a means of pinpointing his location. But he has not been charged in connection with the bin Laden operation.
Americans might wonder how Pakistan could imprison a man who helped track down the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
Afridi hasn’t seen his lawyer since 2012 and his wife and children are his only visitors. For two years his file “disappeared”, delaying a court appeal that still hasn’t proceeded. The courts now say a prosecutor is unavailable, his lawyer, Qamar Nadeem Afridi, told The Associated Press.
Afridi spends his days alone, isolated from a general prison population filled with militants who have vowed to kill him for his role in locating bin Laden. In an interview with Fox News, Afridi described being routinely tortured by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with cigarette burns and electric shocks while at ISI Headquarters at Abpara.
In mid-November 2013, the Reuters news agency reported that he had just been charged with murder in regard to the death, eight years earlier, of a patient he had treated. In March 2015, Samiullah Khan Afridi, Afridi’s former lawyer, was shot dead in Peshawar. A Pakistani Taliban faction named Jamaatul Ahrar claimed responsibility for his murder.
February 4, 2018 at 5:44 PM
Sad to know, one who helped is getting punished.
Apt writing Author.
February 4, 2018 at 5:44 PM
Sad to know, one who helped is getting punished.
Apt writing Author..