Minister rules out release of doctor who spied for CIA

islamabad — A jailed doctor believed to have helped the CIA hunt down Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will be neither released nor handed over to the United States, Pakistan’s law minister has told legislators, media reported on Wednesday.

Dr Shakil Afridi ran a bogus anti-polio vaccination campaign to collect DNA samples of Bin Laden who was then killed by the US forces in May 2011 in a secret raid in a northern Pakistani town. The raid had plunged relations between the uneasy strategic partners to a new low.

Pakistan says Afridi’s action had enormously damaged the anti-polio campaign in the country. Afridi was arrested soon after the Bin Laden raid and charged with having ties to militants, which he denied.

“The law is taking its course and Afridi is having full opportunity of a fair trial,” the Daily Times newspaper quoted Law Minister Zahid Hamid as telling the upper house, in response to a lawmaker’s query about reports of a possible release.

“Afridi worked against the law and our national interest, and the Pakistan government has repeatedly been telling the United States that under our law he committed a crime and was facing the law.”

In 2012, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison after being convicted of being a member of militant group Lashkar-e-Islam.

That conviction was overturned in 2013, but Afridi was then charged with murder, relating to the death of a patient eight years earlier. He remains in jail awaiting trial.

Many Pakistanis were infuriated by the midnight US raid to assassinate Bin Laden.

Last May, Pakistan’s foreign ministry angrily criticised US President-elect Donald Trump for saying he could get Pakistan to free Afridi “within two minutes”.

Pakistan joined the US war on militancy after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. —