Hero doctor who helped nail Bin Laden tortured in Pakistani prison

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California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said the Obama administration is not doing enough to help a man who risked his life to stop America's top enemy.

“News of Dr. Afidi’s physical torture by the Pakistani government is not surprising," Rohraacher said. "The Obama administration and others in the US Government have abandoned him and left him to the mercy of the same people who hid Osama Bin Laden for years.

“It is shameful how little regard this administration has shown for Dr. Afidi’s well being, so why should we expect Pakistan to act any differently?” he added.



Read more: Hero doctor who helped nail Bin Laden tortured in Pakistani prison, says family | Fox News

 

[waltky]

Health workers that helped with bin-Laden surveillance get their jobs back...

Pakistanis linked to CIA bin Laden plot reinstated
March 14, 2013 — A Pakistani court reinstated in their jobs on Thursday 17 health workers who were fired last year for allegedly participating in a CIA scheme to confirm the presence of Osama bin Laden in a town in northwest Pakistan, a defense lawyer said.

Lawyer Javed Awan said the court order affected 16 female health workers and one male whom a government health department suspended last year for failing to inform authorities about Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi's fake vaccination campaign. The health workers insist they did not know Afridi was working for the CIA.

The campaign aimed to collect blood samples from bin Laden's family to show that the al-Qaida leader was in the northern town of Abbottabad, where he was later killed in a U.S. raid in May 2011. Pakistan strongly protested the raid, considering it a violation of the country's sovereignty.

Afridi was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for ties to militants. But it is widely believed that he was punished for his role in the raid. Afridi's lawyer and his family have said he is innocent as he did nothing against the interests of Pakistan.

Awan said the 17 had been directed by senior health officials to participate in the vaccination campaign, which ran in the town from February 15 to May 15, 2010, and that they were innocent of wrongdoing. "The court has done justice to them," he said. "I am happy that I got my job back," said Amraiza Bibi, one of the 17 who was present in the court during the ruling.

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[Political Junky]

Rohrabacher needed his name in the paper. We haven't heard much lately from that wingnut from Orange County, CA.

 

[waltky]

Dr. Afridi to get a new trial...

Pakistan to hold retrial of doctor who helped CIA
August 29, 2013 — A senior judicial official on Thursday overturned the prison sentence of a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden and ordered his re-trial, citing procedural problems with the initial trial.

The official, Sahibzada Mohammad Anis, issued the ruling because the person who sentenced Dr. Shakil Afridi to 33 years in prison was not authorized to hear the case, said Feroz Shah, a government administrator. Afridi was convicted in May 2012 of "conspiring against the state" by giving money and providing medical treatment to Islamic militants in Pakistan's Khyber tribal area, not for helping the CIA track down bin Laden. The doctor's family and the militants denied the allegations. The case has caused friction between Pakistan and the United States, complicating a relationship that Washington views as vital for fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as negotiating an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi is photographed in Pakistan's tribal area of Jamrud in Khyber region. A senior judicial official has overturned the prison sentence of the doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden. The official has also ordered the doctor's retrial.

In the U.S. and other Western nations, Afridi was viewed as a hero who had helped eliminate the world's most wanted man. The doctor ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA in an attempt to verify the al-Qaida leader's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad. U.S. commandos later killed bin Laden there in May 2011 in a unilateral raid. Pakistani officials were outraged by the bin Laden operation, which led to international suspicion that they had been harboring al-Qaida's founder. In their eyes, Afridi was a traitor who had collaborated with a foreign spy agency in an illegal operation on Pakistani soil.

Officials in Washington have called for Afridi to be released. On Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told journalists that Afridi's continued detention "sends exactly the wrong message." "We hope this latest development leads to an outcome that reflects the fact that bringing Osama bin Laden to justice was clearly in Pakistan's interest — as well as ours," Harf said. The doctor was tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulations, or FCR, the set of laws that govern Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region. Human rights organizations have criticized the FCR for not providing suspects the right to legal representation, to present material evidence, or to cross-examine witnesses. Verdicts are handled by a government official in consultation with a council of elders.

More Pakistan to hold retrial of doctor who helped CIA | CNS News

 

[waltky]

Dey gonna keep him inna hooscow...

Pakistani doctor who helped find bin Laden is unlikely to go free
November 24, 2013 — The Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency find Osama bin Laden is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars, regardless of whether charges of manslaughter filed against him last week stick, security officials and analysts say.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, 51, has been imprisoned by Pakistani authorities since May 2011 for his role in a fictitious polio immunization program that the CIA hoped would provide proof that bin Laden was hiding with his family in a high-walled compound in the town of Abbotabad, 60 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. The ruse failed to collect the evidence the CIA was hoping for, but Afridi was imprisoned anyway. Repeated U.S. entreaties that he be released — most recently in October, when Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited the White House — have been rejected.

That’s likely to continue, analysts here say, because the country’s powerful army has made it clear that it views Afridi as a traitor for working for the CIA, even though bin Laden had ordered terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of Pakistani troops and civilians. The army was hugely embarrassed by the May 2011 U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden less than a mile from the country’s top military academy. Afridi was charged Wednesday by authorities administering Pakistan’s northwest tribal areas bordering Afghanistan with being responsible for the 2006 death of an 8-year-old boy whom he had operated on for appendicitis, said his lawyer, Samiullah Afridi.

Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi is photographed in Pakistan's tribal area of Jamrud in Khyber region. A senior judicial official has overturned the prison sentence of the doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden. The official has also ordered the doctor's retrial.

The manslaughter charges, filed seven years ago by the boy’s mother, allege that Afridi was not qualified or authorized to carry out the surgery at his clinic in the Khyber tribal area, the lawyer said. The charges come as Afridi awaits a hearing of charges accusing him of “conspiring against the state” with Mangal Bagh Afridi, the Pakistan Taliban insurgent commander for the Khyber trial area. A lower court in the tribal areas convicted Afridi in May 2012 and sentenced him to 33 years in prison.

The Khyber tribal area includes to the Khyber Pass, which connects Kabul and northern areas of landlocked Afghanistan to Pakistan’s ports on the Indian Ocean. It is the major overland supply route for supplies to U.S.-led NATO forces based in Afghanistan. Afridi’s conviction was struck down in August 2012 by a higher tribal court, which ruled the the convicting magistrate had exceeded his legal authority in passing an excessive sentence against Afridi, and ordered a retrial.

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