Daily Times

Doctor Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden in his Abbaottabad compound, was shifted from Adiala Jail to Sahiwal prison amid tight security on Sunday.

Afridi ran a phony vaccination campaign in Abbottabad to help the US intelligence agency trace the former al Qaeda chief on May 2, 2011.

In 2012, he was sentenced to 33 years in prison for links with banned militant groups. The sentence was handed down by the political administration of Khyber district under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) – the colonial-era laws that governed Pakistan’s tribal regions before the 31st Constitutional Amendment that merged Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

In 2014, the FCR commissioner commuted Afridi’s conviction by 10 years and reduced the fine by Rs 1 million

After spending several years in a Peshawar prison, Afridi was moved to Adiala Jail upon requests from the provincial government. The KP government maintained that Afridi’s life was in danger in the Peshawar prison since it also housed hardcore Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants.

The request had been denied by the federal government for a long time before finally moving him in April, 2018.

Published in Daily Times, August 27^th 2018.