Daily Times

Dr Shakil Afridi’s imprisonment has left many questions unanswered about what took place in the run up to the raid by US Navy Seals on the residence of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, his subsequent capture, and the circumstances surrounding his discovery there. In 2011, Navy Seals in helicopters invaded Pakistani airspace and soil to capture bin Laden in Abbottabad, just a few miles away from the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. Abbottabad is a cantonment town, the country’s premier military academy is located there and it beggars belief to assume that bin Laden’s presence was unknown to Pakistani intelligence agencies, as they claim. If it was, then it was a monumental intelligence failure. We hesitate to speculate what it means if they did know. Dr Afridi has been in prison for two years now, following the raid, and his conviction is on charges that have nothing to do with his alleged role in the capture of Osama. It is widely assumed that his alleged collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the real reason he is behind bars. Pakistani authorities insist that Afridi was part of a covert operation by the CIA to winkle out bin Laden’s whereabouts under the cover of a vaccination campaign. Chasing leads allegedly led him to the Abbottabad house where bin Laden was hiding, and he passed this information to the CIA to act on. This, they say, is treason, though how finding the world’s most wanted terrorist in the service of one’s allies is treason remains a challenging question.

Pakistan and the US are formally allies even though there is a great deal of mistrust on both sides. Bin Laden’s capture led to a tremendous outcry from the public in Pakistan and the US, who wanted to know if the government or intelligence establishment were involved in hiding him, or were simply negligent. Various US Congressmen have called for Afridi’s release and for cutting aid to Pakistan, saying that such aid feeds into support for the US’s enemies in Afghanistan. The Abbottabad Commission’s report has yet to see the light of day. The military top brass were let off the hook with a stern finger-wag from parliament after the raid debacle, and meanwhile, Dr Afridi is languishing in jail after conviction on dubious charges by a summary tribal areas court. It appears that Afridi is in jail because a trial on treason charges would raise and maybe answer a host of questions uncomfortable for intelligence officials. Secrecy in this case is no longer acceptable to the public nor should it be for their elected representatives. Moreover, in the interests of justice and the rule of law, Dr Afridi must be tried on substantiated charges and allowed to defend his actions in a proper court. *