Deadly Blast in Pakistan May Have Targeted Judge in Afridi Case

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A deadly suicide attack in Peshawar, Pakistan today that killed 10 and injured 70 was reportedly aimed at Police Commissioner Sahibzada Anees, the presiding officer in the appeal of Dr. Shakil Afridi, the man who helped the U.S. search for Osama bin Laden and is now serving a 33-year sentence on terrorism charges.

Read more @ Deadly Blast in Pakistan May Have Targeted Judge in Afridi Case

The doctor helps us find Osama Bin Laden and our Politician-in-Chief won't lift a hand to help him.

 

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Pakistan gearin' up for elections...

Pakistan's changing political landscape
30 April 2013 - Pakistan can be an unpredictable place. But in a chequered history that has kept lurching from crises to coups, one event has kept coming back, with reassuring certainty - elections.

I've covered almost every one of them since 1988 when martial law abruptly ended and a people who fought for democracy directed their energies and enthusiasm towards the battle for ballots. What boisterous campaigns there've been - massive rallies that packed stadiums and fields, convoys of vehicles snaking, horns blaring, through villages and down highways - a chaotic carnival in every constituency. But elections in Pakistan can't be like that anymore. It's simply too dangerous. Not a day goes by without a report of an attack by one of many armed groups on a politician, or a public space, or the police.

Pakistan is gearing up for elections on 11 May

I'm back in Pakistan to find out what it's like to campaign in "Elections 2013", and what it takes to win. The crush of massive crowds has mostly been replaced by "corner rallies". Politicians travel across the land in helicopters on carefully guarded schedules, rather than spontaneously weighing into the fray. Something has been lost. But something else has been gained. A different kind of explosion has transformed the political landscape here. There's a dizzying array of television channels in all the languages spoken here. And social media provides the safest of places to argue and analyse, and of course to jockey for influence and joke. It wouldn't be Pakistan if they didn't.

Another chance

Many worry about "saving Pakistan" - from the blight of official corruption, growing violence and extremism, deepening divisions. That's on top of the age-old problems of poverty and illiteracy. Everyone talks of "change". Everyone has waited a long time for it to happen. Will it come, this time, from within the parties which traditionally dominated politics or will it usher in the rise of new political dynamic? Yet again, this is an election where people warn that Pakistan "at a crossroads", is facing a "last chance".

Despite all the threats and disappointments, every person I have spoken to - so far - told me: "Yes of course I am voting!" Pakistan always seems to get another chance. And yet again, you sense that at least the people want to seize it. Once more, I'm following another Pakistani election, and this time will be posting updates on this page.

BBC News - Pakistan's changing political landscape

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Pakistan faces 'bloodiest' election
2 May 2013 - Pakistan's elections are being called the bloodiest ever. But that's not the only reason why they stand apart.

There's another message on the back of black T-shirted elite anti-terrorism police - NO FEAR, in bold white capital letters. And it's not just well-trained muscled gunmen at campaign rallies who want to say they're not afraid. Leaders of three political parties, publicly threatened by Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, stood shoulder-to-shoulder and announced this week they would not be cowed by their threats of violence. Not a day goes by without election attacks and deaths on the front pages of Pakistani newspapers.

There has been surge in violence aimed at political parties and candidates

Despite that, opinion polls are indicating there could be a record turnout, higher than the 44% in the last elections in 2008. That's partly because of a surge in young voters. An estimated 31% of the electorate is between the ages of 18 and 29. "You could say these are the first youth elections," writer and former Pakistani Ambassador Maleeha Lohdi told the BBC. "There's also a new enthusiasm among all voters which is good news for Pakistan."

'Eye-to-eye contact'

As we start our Pakistan election coverage, we've attended election meetings and rallies in the capital Islamabad and in the most populous and relatively peaceful Punjab province. Party leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan make a point of removing bullet-proof glass shields from their speaker podiums to address large crowds now being held back at a safer distance. "It's better to have eye-to-eye contact," PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif told me before one rally this week in Sarghoda in Punjab. "We're still going door to door, shop to shop, where we can," said Shafqat Mahmood, a candidate for Imran Khan's PTI party in the city of Lahore. Campaign organisers admit they've had to cancel rallies planned for volatile cities like Karachi in the south, or in the northwest close to the tribal areas, for security reasons.

Some parties, including the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), are being accused of using the threat of violence as an excuse for lacklustre campaigns and what's expected to be their dismal performance in some areas on polling day - the more usual danger in democracy. But the danger of violence is all too real. In sensitive areas like Balochistan province, there are reports some election workers don't want to man polling stations because they fear for their lives. The Pakistan army has announced 70,000 troops will be deployed in four provinces on election day, along with thousands of police and other security forces. The 11 May election will be not just one of Pakistan's most important elections. It will also mark another decisive showdown between forces determined to shape this country through violence, and those who still believe the ballot box matters in trying to resolve Pakistan's growing crises.

BBC News - Pakistan faces 'bloodiest' election

 

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Imran Khan falls at political rally...

Leading Pakistan politician falls, injures skull
May 7,`13 -- One of Pakistan's most prominent politicians, former cricket star Imran Khan, fell at a political rally Tuesday, leaving him with two hairline skull fractures and knocking him off the campaign trail ahead of Saturday's general election.

Khan has emerged as a wild-card candidate and it is unclear how much his widespread personal popularity will translate into votes at the polls. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, however, is considered one of the top three parties in the country. Khan was treated at the hospital he himself built in honor of his late mother in the eastern city of Lahore. Doctors told local television that Kahn suffered two minor fractures to the skull and had a backache, but none of his injuries were life-threatening.

Just hours after the fall, the charismatic politician spoke to reporters from his hospital bed. He was visibly shaken and had a cut on his forehead, but he was still asking people to vote for his party. "I have done whatever I could do," he told national broadcaster Dunya TV. "Now you have to decide whether you want to make a new Pakistan." Asad Omar, leader of Khan's party, told Pakistan's Geo News that party leaders would meet Wednesday to discuss how to continue his campaign during the next three days. He said Khan will spend the night at the hospital, and that doctors are asking him to rest for 15 days. But the former cricket star, Omar said, is in good physical condition and wants to resume his political activities as soon as possible.

Outside the hospital, hundreds gathered awaiting word of his condition. Dramatic television footage of the fall showed Khan standing on a stack of crates piled onto a forklift accompanied by at least three guards or supporters. As the forklift began to raise him up to the stage, the cricket star and three of the men standing next to him fall back over a railing. Khan fell at least 5 meters (15 feet), but it was not clear on what type of surface he landed. Local TV footage showed supporters carrying him away from the rally, apparently unconscious and with a bloodied face.

Family and close aides also were at the hospital to check on his condition. "Imran Khan wants his supporters to remain peaceful and united, and he says he will soon be among them," his sister, Rani Hafiz Khan, told the Pakistani ARY news channel by telephone. The fall put a damper on what has been one of Pakistan's most dynamic election campaigns. Khan earned legendary status in the country when he led the underdog national team to a 1992 cricket World Cup victory, and had injected new energy into a political system long dominated by dynasties. He entered politics in the late 1990s but it wasn't until just a few years ago that his PTI party gained a widespread national following. Much of Khan's support has come from young, middle-class Pakistanis in the country's major cities, a potentially influential group. Almost half of Pakistan's more than 80 million registered voters are under the age of 35.

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How will Imran Khan's fall affect Pakistan's election?
7 May 2013 - In an election called the most unpredictable in Pakistan's history, the campaign took a turn no-one expected.

Imran Khan, a rising political star, took a fall. Images of the country's former cricket captain tumbling from a wooden lift next to a stage played over and over again on Pakistan's many 24-hour channels. And, with his fall, the political high ground rose. His chief challenger, Nawaz Sharif, declared at his rally he was cancelling his campaigning the next day in sympathy and solidarity.

Political leaders across the spectrum sent wishes and offered prayers. President Asif Ali Zardari sent flowers to the Lahore hospital where Mr Khan was under observation after suffering a head injury that needed several stitches. Suddenly, there seemed to be a rare moment of fair play on the political playing fields. After weeks of denouncing and demeaning each other, bitter rivals ended the invective.

Point-scoring?

Across social media, where this election has a life of its own, comments poured in to commend Mr Sharif, the two-time prime minister now facing the fight of his political life against Mr Khan. "Fantastic maturity"; "brotherly spirit"; "classy" were just some of the adjectives spilling across a Pakistani Twitter timeline. But in a country where political debate is a popular sport, others landed a harder punch. "All busy scoring points," wrote one tweep. Pakistani writer Abbas Nasir, commenting on Mr Sharif's move, tweeted: "Shrewd political manoeuvre rather than a gracious act/gesture. Should be seen as such. Probably work too. "

British Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie tweeted me to say: "That is fair play but then we have to ask: Why have there been no suspended rallies when candidates are killed?" Her message came from the southern city of Karachi, where candidates and party offices are attacked almost daily by the Pakistani Taliban, who've declared this election unIslamic. Three major parties are on their hit-list, but not Mr Khan's Movement for Justice or Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. On the same day as Mr Khan's accident, a bomb targeted the brother of a candidate for the Pakistan People's Party in north-west Pakistan. Zahir Khan was killed along with five others.

More BBC News - How will Imran Khan's fall affect Pakistan's election?

 

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Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claims Pakistan election win...

Pakistan's Sharif declares election victory
May 11,`13 -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared victory following a historic election marred by violence Saturday, a remarkable comeback for a leader once toppled in a military coup and sent into exile.

The 63-year-old Sharif, who has twice served as premier, touted his success after unofficial, partial vote counts showed his Pakistan Muslim League-N party with an overwhelming lead. The party weathered a strong campaign by former cricket star Imran Khan that energized Pakistan's young people. Sharif expressed a desire to work with all parties to solve the country's problems in a victory speech given to his supporters in the eastern city of Lahore as his lead in the national election became apparent based on vote counts announced by Pakistan state TV.

The results, which need to be officially confirmed, indicated Sharif's party has an overwhelming lead but would fall short of winning a majority of the 272 directly elected national assembly seats. That means he would have to put together a ruling coalition, which could make it more difficult to tackle the country's many problems. "I appeal to all to come sit with me at the table so that this nation can get rid of this curse of power cuts, inflation and unemployment," Sharif said.

Despite attacks against candidates, party workers and voters that killed 29 people Saturday, Pakistanis turned out in large numbers to elect the national and provincial assemblies. The high participation was a sign of Pakistanis' desire for change after years of hardship under the outgoing government, and it offered a sharp rebuke to Taliban militants and others who have tried to derail the election with attacks that have killed more than 150 people in recent weeks. "Our country is in big trouble," said Mohammad Ali, a shopkeeper who voted in Lahore. "Our people are jobless. Our business is badly affected. We are dying every day."

The vote marked the first time a civilian government has completed its full five-year term and transferred power in democratic elections in a country that has experienced three coups and constant political instability since it was established in 1947. The election was being watched closely by the United States, which relies on the nuclear-armed country of 180 million people for help fighting Islamic militants and negotiating an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Passion and energy were seen throughout Pakistan, as millions of people headed to the polls, waving flags and chanting slogans in support of their party. Some were young, first-time voters and others elderly Pakistanis who leaned on canes or friends for support as they dropped their vote in the ballot box.

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Afridi faces new legal challenge...

Pakistan doctor who helped find Osama bin Laden in legal tussle
Dec 18, 2013: A Pakistani doctor jailed after helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden faces fresh legal wrangling after an appeal tribunal on Wednesday said a retrial order was "ambiguous" and needed clarification.

Shakeel Afridi was convicted of treason under the country's tribal justice system for alleged ties to militants and jailed for 33 years in May 2012, but the authorities set aside the sentence in August on appeal and ordered a retrial. Lawyers for the doctor challenged the August ruling, made by the commissioner of the northwestern city of Peshawar, in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Tribunal. They sought bail for Afridi and argued that the retrial should involve a complete re-investigation of the case including hearing and cross-examining witnesses again, and not simply a reconsideration of the existing evidence.

The FATA Tribunal said on Wednesday in a written judgment that the August ruling was "ambiguous and self-contradictory" and directed the Peshawar commissioner to issue a fresh order to clarify matters. "The tribunal has asked him to remove ambiguities from his order and make a clear decision and send it back to us," tribunal chairman Shah Wali Khan told reporters after issuing the order. Afridi was arrested after US troops killed al-Qaida chief bin Laden in May 2011 in the northwestern town of Abbottabad. Islamabad branded the raid a violation of sovereignty and US relations fell to an all-time low.

Afridi had been recruited by the CIA to run a vaccination programme in Abbottabad in the hope of obtaining DNA samples to identify bin Laden, although medics never managed to gain access to the family. He was convicted not for working for the CIA, for which the court said it had no jurisdiction — but for alleged ties to militants. Angry lawmakers in the US saw the original sentence as retaliation for the bin Laden raid and threatened to freeze millions of dollars in vital aid to Pakistan. The then secretary of state Hillary Clinton denounced Afridi's treatment as "unjust and unwarranted".

Last month Pakistan authorities unexpectedly charged Afridi with murder and fraud over the death of a patient some six years earlier. His brother Jamil condemned Wednesday's ruling, accusing the authorities of manipulating the case to keep the doctor in custody. "The government just want to delay his case as much as it can. They want him to stay in jail," Afridi told AFP by telephone. "It is a very simple case and the government stand is very weak, that's why they planted a murder case against the doctor." Under the tribal justice system, Afridi faces a life sentence if convicted in the murder case. Punishment for fraud is seven years in jail, his lawyer said.

Pakistan doctor who helped find Osama bin Laden in legal tussle - The Times of India

 

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The Donald gonna make a deal to free Afridi?...

Pakistan ‘Willing’ to Discuss Freedom for Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden
December 16, 2016 — Pakistan says “it would be willing” to discuss with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration freedom for a jailed Pakistani doctor who helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, is serving 33 years in a Pakistani prison on treason charges. U.S. authorities have denounced Afridi’s treatment as unjust and unwarranted and have frequently demanded his release. “Pakistan would be willing to look at how we could move forward in a resolution of this problem,” Tariq Fatemi, the Pakistani prime minister’s foreign policy aide, told VOA’s Urdu service. “We are not holding on to Dr. Shakil Afridi because of some personal animosity,” he insisted.

Afridi a hero

Afridi is hailed as a hero in the United States for helping the CIA obtain the Bin Laden family’s DNA by staging a fake immunization campaign in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. The move led to the May 2011 covert U.S. military raid that killed the al-Qaida leader. Weeks later, media revelations about Afridi’s role prompted Pakistani authorities to arrest him. He was tried and imprisoned in 2012. Afridi has challenged the sentence in an appeals court. During his election campaign, Trump told Fox News that if elected he would get Afridi out of the jail “in two minutes.”

Jamil Afridi, left, holds a news conference in Peshawar, Pakistan, May 28, 2012. He contends his physician brother – Shakil Afridi, who helped the United States find Osama bin Laden – was the victim of a sham trial in Pakistan. Shakil Afridi is serving a 33-year sentence.​

Fatemi told VOA that a presidential pardon could be sought for the doctor under Pakistani laws but only after judicial proceedings are concluded. “The whole process has to go through the judiciary, and it is for the judiciary then to decide whether a case is ripe or not ripe for it to be sent to before the president for a possible exercise of the powers of the president to give pardon,” Fatemi said. He reiterated that Afridi’s fake immunization drive seriously hurt and raised suspicions about vaccination programs the World Health Organization is running in Pakistan. Observers expect the Afridi issue will continue to strain historically complicated bilateral relations under Trump’s new administration.

Relations are strained

The incoming administration’s election platform document has also indirectly referred to the issue, warning that the process of “strengthening of historic ties” between the United States and Pakistan “cannot progress as long as any citizen of Pakistan can be punished for helping the War on Terror.” The two countries are allies in the war against terrorism, but Pakistan’s alleged support for Taliban insurgents and the Haqqani network fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan has long strained bilateral relations. But despite the troubled history and skepticism, some in Pakistan foresee a better future for mistrust-marred bilateral relations.

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Dr. Afridi’s name has come up in numerous pieces of U.S. legislation over recent years...

16 Years After 9/11, Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Remains in Pakistan Prison
September 11, 2017 – As the United States marks the 16th anniversary of al-Qaeda’s devastating attack, the Pakistani doctor who helped in the effort to track down Osama bin Laden six years ago remains imprisoned, despite efforts by U.S. lawmakers to condition U.S. aid on his freedom.

On Thursday. the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a FY 2018 spending bill which, once again, withholds $33 million in economic and security assistance to Pakistan until the secretary of state certifies “that Dr. Shakil Afridi has been released from prison and cleared of all charges relating to the assistance provided to the United States in locating Osama bin Laden.” The withheld amount deliberately points to the 33-year prison term to which Afridi was sentenced in May 2012. Although he was convicted on charges unrelated to the hunt for the fugitive terrorist, his supporters in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere have no doubt the jail term is payback for his role in the bin Laden affair. Pakistan was acutely embarrassed by the discovery that the world’s most-wanted terrorist had been able to live, undetected, for years in a house less than half a mile from a top Pakistani military academy, and 70 miles from the capital.

Afridi was arrested several weeks after U.S. Navy SEALS raided the compound in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 and killed the man held responsible for the deaths of almost 3,000 people killed when hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania. U.S. officials later confirmed that Afridi had helped to identify the occupants of the Abbottabad compound by obtaining DNA evidence under the cover of a public vaccination campaign. Leon Panetta, who was CIA director at the time of the raid, told CBS “60 Minutes” in 2012 that Afridi had “helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation.” After being incarcerated for a year, accused originally of treason, Afridi was convicted in a Peshawar tribal tribunal in May 2012 of links to an obscure extremist group.

But his supporters view those charges as trumped up – as did an official Pakistan commission of inquiry, which recommended in 2013 that he be retried, this time for his role in the bin Laden raid. (Reinforcing that impression, Pakistani Law Minister Zahid Hamid told lawmakers in Islamabad last January that Afridi would not be freed since he had collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency in helping to track bin Laden through a fake polio vaccination campaign.) Afridi’s plight has long concerned U.S. lawmakers, and his name has come up in many pieces of appropriation and other legislation over recent years, including the Consolidated Appropriations Act signed into law last May to fund the federal government through the end of September.

The FY 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House in July, included a sense of Congress clause calling Afridi “a hero to whom the people of the United States, Pakistan and the world owe a debt of gratitude for his help in finally locating Osama bin Laden before more innocent American, Pakistani and other lives were lost to this terrorist leader.” Afridi’s imprisonment has also been cited in bills seeking Pakistan’s designation as a state-sponsor of terrorism. Shakil Afridi came up during last year’s U.S. presidential campaign, when then Republican nominee Donald Trump said that as president he would get Pakistan to release the jailed doctor “in two minutes,” and observed that the U.S. gives “a lot of money to Pakistan.” Pakistan’s then-interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, retorted that Pakistan was “not a colony” of the U.S., and dismissed U.S. aid to his country as “peanuts.” Since 2001 U.S. taxpayers have contributed more than $33 billion to Pakistan, either in direct aid or as reimbursements for counterterrorism efforts.

Afridi’s imprisonment is one of a host of irritants in Washington’s uneasy relationship with the ostensible ally. In his recently-announced South Asia strategy, President Trump put Pakistan on notice over its troubling behavior, in particular its sheltering of terrorists. Afridi was reportedly one of the topics discussed when National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster met in Washington last April with Pakistan’s finance minister Ishaq Dar, acting in the capacity of an envoy for then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It was expected to feature again in an anticipated Trump-Sharif meeting on the sidelines of a U.S.-Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh the following month, but instead the two had just a brief handshake. (Sharif’s premiership ended abruptly in July when the Supreme Court disqualified him from office.) One of Pakistan’s numerous critics on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), raised Afridi’s plight once again on the House floor last June. “Pakistan claims to be United States’ number one counterterrorism ally, yet they hypocritically hold this hero in a Pakistani prison,” he said. Accusing Pakistan of being “on the wrong side” in the war on terror, Poe said Afridi deserved a medal, not imprisonment.

16 Years After 9/11, Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Remains in Pakistan Prison

 

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Shakil Afridi remains in Pakistani jail...

Doctor who aided hunt for bin Laden remains in jail
Tue, Jan 23, 2018 - Shakil Afridi has languished in jail for years — since 2011, when the Pakistani doctor used a vaccination scam in an attempt to identify Osama bin Laden’s home, aiding US Navy Seals who tracked and killed the al-Qaeda leader.

Americans might wonder how Pakistan could imprison a man who helped track down the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Pakistanis are apt to ask a different question: How could the US betray its trust and cheapen its sovereignty with a secret nighttime raid that shamed the military and its intelligence agencies? “The Shakil Afridi saga is the perfect metaphor for US-Pakistan relations” — a growing tangle of mistrust and miscommunication that threatens to jeopardize key efforts against terrorism, said Michael Kugelman, Asia program deputy director at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. The US believes its financial support entitles it to Pakistan’s backing in its efforts to defeat the Taliban — then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged to free Afridi, telling Fox News in April 2016 he would get him out of prison in “two minutes ... because we give a lot of aid to Pakistan.”

However, Pakistan is resentful of what it sees as US interference in its affairs. Mohammed Amir Rana, director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies in Islamabad, said the trust deficit between the two nations is an old story that will not be rewritten until Pakistan and the US revise their expectations of each other, recognize their divergent security concerns and plot an Afghan war strategy, other than the current one which is to both kill and talk to the Taliban. “Shakil Afridi [is] part of the larger puzzle,” he said. Afridi has not 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 has not proceeded.

The courts now say a prosecutor is unavailable, said his lawyer and cousin, Qamar Nadeem. “Everyone is afraid to even talk about him, to mention his name,” and not without reason, he said. In Nadeem’s office, the wind whistles through a clumsily covered window shattered by a bullet. On another window, clear tape covers a second bullet hole, both from a shooting incident several years ago in which no suspects have been named. Another one of Afridi’s lawyers was gunned down outside his Peshawar home and a Peshawar jail deputy superintendent, who had advocated on Afridi’s behalf, was shot and killed, Nadeem said. 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.

He was accused under tribal law alleging he aided and facilitated militants in the nearby Khyber tribal region, Nadeem said. Even the Taliban scoffed at the charge that was filed to make use of Pakistan’s antiquated tribal system, which allows closed courts, does not require the defendant to be present in court and limits the number of appeals, he said. If charged with treason — which Pakistani authorities say he committed — Afridi would have the right to public hearings and numerous appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, where the details of the bin Laden raid could be laid bare, something neither the civilian nor military establishments want, his lawyer said.

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Shakil Afridi remains in Pakistani jail...

Doctor who aided hunt for bin Laden remains in jail
Tue, Jan 23, 2018 - Shakil Afridi has languished in jail for years — since 2011, when the Pakistani doctor used a vaccination scam in an attempt to identify Osama bin Laden’s home, aiding US Navy Seals who tracked and killed the al-Qaeda leader.

Americans might wonder how Pakistan could imprison a man who helped track down the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Pakistanis are apt to ask a different question: How could the US betray its trust and cheapen its sovereignty with a secret nighttime raid that shamed the military and its intelligence agencies? “The Shakil Afridi saga is the perfect metaphor for US-Pakistan relations” — a growing tangle of mistrust and miscommunication that threatens to jeopardize key efforts against terrorism, said Michael Kugelman, Asia program deputy director at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. The US believes its financial support entitles it to Pakistan’s backing in its efforts to defeat the Taliban — then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged to free Afridi, telling Fox News in April 2016 he would get him out of prison in “two minutes ... because we give a lot of aid to Pakistan.”

However, Pakistan is resentful of what it sees as US interference in its affairs. Mohammed Amir Rana, director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies in Islamabad, said the trust deficit between the two nations is an old story that will not be rewritten until Pakistan and the US revise their expectations of each other, recognize their divergent security concerns and plot an Afghan war strategy, other than the current one which is to both kill and talk to the Taliban. “Shakil Afridi [is] part of the larger puzzle,” he said. Afridi has not 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 has not proceeded.

The courts now say a prosecutor is unavailable, said his lawyer and cousin, Qamar Nadeem. “Everyone is afraid to even talk about him, to mention his name,” and not without reason, he said. In Nadeem’s office, the wind whistles through a clumsily covered window shattered by a bullet. On another window, clear tape covers a second bullet hole, both from a shooting incident several years ago in which no suspects have been named. Another one of Afridi’s lawyers was gunned down outside his Peshawar home and a Peshawar jail deputy superintendent, who had advocated on Afridi’s behalf, was shot and killed, Nadeem said. 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.

He was accused under tribal law alleging he aided and facilitated militants in the nearby Khyber tribal region, Nadeem said. Even the Taliban scoffed at the charge that was filed to make use of Pakistan’s antiquated tribal system, which allows closed courts, does not require the defendant to be present in court and limits the number of appeals, he said. If charged with treason — which Pakistani authorities say he committed — Afridi would have the right to public hearings and numerous appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, where the details of the bin Laden raid could be laid bare, something neither the civilian nor military establishments want, his lawyer said.

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Why the hell aren't we doing anything to help this poor guy? We owe him big time.

 

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Mebbe dey'll free him...

... if dey want dey's aid reinstated.