ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has turned down a
demand by United States Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta to release a Pakistani physician who faces
treason charges for helping the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the operation to kill
Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's political and
military leaders discussed at length Panetta's
demand and decided the alleged informer, Dr Shakil
Afridi, should not be given leeway, according to
highly placed Foreign Office sources in Islamabad.
The snub was made in light of a recommendation
from the Abbottabad Judicial Commission to
register a treason case against him. The
commission is investigating the raid on Bin
Laden's hide-out in the Abbottabad by US Special
Forces, who killed the al-Qaeda leader on May 2,
2011.
Afridi, who the commission has
declared a "national criminal", has been charged
with conspiring against the state by
collaborating with a
foreign spy agency, but not yet with treason - a
charge that would carry the death penalty. The
doctor was arrested by Pakistani security agencies
at his house in Hayatabad, Peshawar, 20 days after
Bin Laden's death. In his appearance before the
commission, Afridi confessed to having set up a
vaccination campaign in Abbottabad aimed at
collecting DNA samples to establish the
whereabouts of Bin Laden and his family.
In a January 28 interview with CBS,
Panetta, who headed the CIA when Afridi worked for
the agency, urged the Pakistani authorities to
release the doctor immediately. However, sources
in the security agencies rule out any such
possibility, saying he will be tried in accordance
with the orders of the commission, tasked with
probing the covert American raid in Abbottabad in
which the most wanted al-Qaeda chief was shot dead
along with his son and two aides.
Afridi
confessed to conducting a fake polio vaccination
drive in the Bilal Town area of Abbottabad from
March 15-18 and April 21-23, 2011 to try and get
DNA samples from the residents of the compound in
which Bin Laden was hiding. The four-member
Abbottabad Judicial Commission, led by Led by
Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal and set up through a
resolution passed unanimously by a joint session
of parliament 11 days after the raid, is putting
the final touches to its report, though it has
already directed the government not to hand over
Afridi to the Americans and to proceed with the
treason charges.
Panetta's statement comes
as US lawmakers push for a bill that would give US
citizenship to Afridi, who is in his late 40s and
has an American wife of Pakistani origin.
Well-informed diplomats in Islamabad
believe the orders to initiate a treason trial
against Afridi must have something to do with the
apparent refusal of the CIA to provide any
information to the commission after it had been
sent a detailed questionnaire last year through
the Pakistani Foreign Office. Pakistani security
agencies continue to interrogate Afridi in a bid
to ascertain how the CIA recruited him and several
other civilians who have been under interrogation
since the Abbottabad raid. This would help them
expose the American's recruitment network in
Pakistan.
Coming from a humble background,
Afridi graduated from the Khyber Medical College
in Peshawar in 1990 and was working as the doctor
in-charge of Khyber Agency of the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The
doctor's close aides say the whereabouts of his
family remains unknown.
Defense Secretary
Panetta admitted in his January 28 interview that
the doctor had been working for the Americans and
had provided information to the CIA about the
fugitive al-Qaeda chief. Based on this
information, US Navy Seals raided his hideout,
killed him and then buried him at sea.
In
the interview, Panetta was asked: "There is a
Pakistani doctor who, as we understand, was
helping our efforts there, a man named Shakil
Afridi, who is now being charged with high treason
in Pakistan and I wonder what you think of that?"
Panetta replied: "I am very concerned
about what the Pakistanis did with this
individual. This was an individual who, in fact,
had helped provide intelligence that was very
helpful with regard to this operation. And he was
not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan. He was
not in any way doing anything that would have
undermined Pakistan. As a matter of fact, Pakistan
and the United States have a common cause here
against terrorism, have a common cause against
al-Qaeda, and have a common cause against those
who will attack not only our country but their
country. And for them to take this kind of action
against somebody who was helping to go after
terrorism, I just think it is a real mistake on
their part."
"Should they free him?" the
CBS interviewer asked. "They can take whatever
steps they want to do to discipline him, but
ultimately he ought to be released," Panetta
replied.
Afridi's arrest has become a
thorn in the already tense relations between
Islamabad and Washington.
United States
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned
President Asif Ali Zardari in July last year to
seek his help in securing Afridi's release, but
her request was reportedly turned down. Clinton
was told that the matter was sub judice and only
the Judicial Commission could decide his fate.
In a related development, a group of US
congressmen has introduced legislation in the
House of Representatives seeking citizenship for
Afridi. "Today, I have introduced legislation to
grant American citizenship to Shakeel Afridi, the
Pakistan medical doctor who risked his life to
identify Osama bin Laden and help US military
forces bring him to justice. If convicted, he
could be executed," said congressman from
California Dana Rohrabacher on February 4.
"My bill would grant him US citizenship
and send a direct and powerful message to those in
the Pakistani government and military who
protected the mastermind of 9/11 for all those
years and who are now seeking retribution on those
who helped to execute Osama bin Laden,"
Rohrabacher said in the House.
The
citizenship bill has been endorsed by more than a
dozen top congressmen, including Bill Posey and
Roscoe Bartlett. "This bill shows the world that
America does not abandon its friends," Rohrabacher
said.
The physician used a team of nurses
and health workers to administer hepatitis B
vaccinations in Abbottabad, without even informing
the proper authorities. US officials have already
stated that the doctor did manage to gain access
to Bin Laden's compound, but he was unsuccessful
in getting DNA samples from any of his family
members.
As things stand, Afridi's fate
seems to have already been sealed by the
commission, though it is not yet clear whether he
will be tried under Article 6 of the 1973
constitution (on treason charges), or whether he
is to be prosecuted for indulging in espionage
activities for a foreign country. Article 6 of the
constitution that deals with sedition chiefly
dictates that high treason is determined by a
criminal spying on the country's military, its
diplomats or its secret services for a foreign
power.
There remains among senior
diplomats in Islamabad some skepticism of the
commission's directives to the Pakistani
authorities; the million-dollar question raised by
them is how Afridi harmed the national interest by
helping locate the world's most sought-after
terrorist who was responsible for the deaths of
over 3,000 civilians in the 9/11 attack on the
United States.
Amir Mir is a
senior Pakistani journalist and the author of
several books on the subject of militant Islam and
terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder
trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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