Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
The Pakistani doctor sentenced to 33 years' prison for treason after being recruited by the CIA to help find Osama bin Laden is in poor health, a jail official says.
Shakeel Afridi confessed to helping the CIA confirm bin Laden was living in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
The doctor conducted a fake polio vaccination drive to obtain DNA samples from the residents of the compound, where the Al Qaeda figurehead was killed last year.
It is believed the DNA was then tested to see if it belonged to members of bin Laden's family.
Afridi has been jailed under the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), a tribal justice system which date back to the 19th century, found him guilty of waging war against the state.
Officials have said Afridi is being held at the central prison in the north-western city of Peshawar.
"His health condition is bad, a team of doctors will examine him in jail today," jail official Samad Khan said.
"He has been kept away from other prisoners to avert any danger to his life."
Afridi comes from Khyber, one of the seven districts that makes up the tribal belt.
Critics say he should not have been tried under tribal law for an alleged crime, but a senior official in Khyber, Nasir Khan, defended Afridi's trial.
"We have powers to try a resident of FATA (the federally administered tribal areas) under the FCR enforced in tribal areas," he said.
"The trial was kept secret so that no one can attack him.
"We did not reveal even the name of the jirga members to avoid any risk."
There have been conflicting accounts about whether Afridi was present during the proceedings.
Under the FCR, cases are heard by a five to seven-member jirga, or council of tribal elders, along with two officials from the local political administration, Mr Khan said.
He said Afridi's trial lasted two months and that he was given full opportunity to defend himself, but was not entitled to a lawyer.
Afridi's punishment was meted out under the Pakistani penal code, Mr Khan said.
He has the right to appeal either to a tribunal or directly to the Peshawar high court, which has in several cases either remitted or annulled tribal sentences, he added.
The tribunal is made up of three former senior civil servants.
You got Usama bin Laden. We're happy he got killed. But the way it was done we're not happy with. We didn't like that," a Pakistani official told Fox News. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to what he described as the fragile state of U.S.-Pakistani relations. The latest comments did not sit well with lawmakers who have been speaking out for Dr. Shakil Afridi, questioning why the Obama administration did not do more to protect the doctor and his family before he was arrested last year. "The reaction indicates how out of touch the leaders of that country are with reality," California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, said Friday. They are so blinded by their radical Islamic ideology that they cannot see our outrage is justified.
In a strong bipartisan display of congressional anger in response to Afridis jail term, senators on Thursday voted 30-0 in committee to cut $33 million in aid to Pakistan one million for every year of his sentence. That move came a day after a tribal court in Pakistan where the doctor was not allowed to be represented by a lawyer passed its sentence. The diplomatic friction has also complicated negotiations between the countries about Pakistan re-opening overland supply routes to Afghanistan. Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed bin Laden in a stealthy raid in May 2011. Viewed as a hero in the U.S. for helping nab the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11, Afridi was treated like a criminal in Pakistan, a Muslim nation whose alliance with the U.S. has been uneasy.
The latest developments came the same day sources told Fox News that Afridi's physical condition in jail is deteriorating and that he has been placed on a suicide watch. There are also new questions about whether he received a fair trial and whether a federal tribunal would have been more sympathetic. One of the founders of Pakistan's constitution and a top Supreme Court lawyer in that country told Fox News that Afridi should not have been tried by a tribal court and would not have been convicted if he had faced a federal court. "The Jirga didn't have the jurisdiction and they exercised power without jurisdiction, said Ahmed Kasuri, senior attorney in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. And if some court were to apply power without jurisdiction, its a nullity in the eyes of the law. It's got no significance. The appellate authority can forthright set aside that decision."
Pakistani officials continued to insist the U.S. should not let the case dictate broader policy. Supply lines were closed after a U.S. attack on the Pakistani side of the border killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November, and reopening them is a key priority for the U.S. "The U.S. is allowing one issue to become so bloated, at a difficult time, one official told Fox News. Those concerns dont seem to be shared by U.S. lawmakers, who continue to call for Afridis release. All of us are outraged at the imprisonment and sentence of some 33 years, virtually a death sentence to the doctor," Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday. It frankly outraged all of us.
Read more: Pakistan officials: Doctor's sentence payback for bin Laden raid, U.S. need to move on | Fox News
Time for another Seal Team Six operation. Fuck the Pakis. What are they going to do? Protests like crazy lunatics and burn American flags? What is it, like the 1000th time Muslims have gone beserk? Who gives a shit. Eventually, they'll get on their knees and do as we say otherwise no more $$$ to the corrupt theives.We need to see if we can get him out of there.
The doctor should be executed for treason. He's lucky he's only getting some jail time (albeit, in a 3rd-world prison). It's just unacceptable for a citizen to secretly work for an intelligence agency of another nation.
Against a known mass murdering terrorist? Get the fuck out of here. It would have been immoral not to work with the US.
We shouldn't have let it get to this point helping our allies is an afterthought for this administration
The U.S. government has a long history of abandoning people who have helped us during foreign interventions.
GOP Rep. King says Obama officials disclosed identity of jailed Pakistani doctor | Fox News
Obama is being accused of not protecting the doctor's identity. And knowing him, he didn't. But I'm not seeing the smoking gun yet; and I'm pretty sure that the media is uninterested in finding the smoking gun.
GOP Rep. King says Obama officials disclosed identity of jailed Pakistani doctor | Fox News
Obama is being accused of not protecting the doctor's identity. And knowing him, he didn't. But I'm not seeing the smoking gun yet; and I'm pretty sure that the media is uninterested in finding the smoking gun.
Next thing you know he'll be outing CIA spies....
As for the OP - it is a terrible story. I think the US has done the right thing in trying to turn Pakistan towards the west, but I think the move came 10 years too late. Pakistan has been vulnerable to extremism since at least the 1990s - and nothing was done then.
