Pakistani authorities have sentenced a doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden to 33 years in jail on charges of treason, officials said, a move almost certain to further strain ties between Washington and Islamabad.
Shakil Afridi was accused of running a fake
vaccination campaign, in which he collected DNA samples, that is believed to
have helped the American intelligence agency track down bin Laden in a
Pakistani town.
The al Qaeda chieftain was killed in a
unilateral U.S. special forcesraid in the town of Abbottabad in May last
year.
"Dr Shakil has been sentenced to 33 years
imprisonment and a fine of 320,000 Pakistani rupees ($3,477)," said
Mohammad Nasir, a government official in the northwestern city of Peshawar,
where the jail term will be served. He gave no further details.
Afridi is the first person to be sentenced
by Pakistani authorities in the bin Laden case.
The sentence was handed down under tribal laws, which
unlike the national penal code, do not carry the death penalty for treason.
U.S. officials were strongly critical of the sentencing.
"Without commenting on specific individuals, anyone
who helped the United States find bin Laden was working against al Qaeda and
not against Pakistan," said Pentagon spokesman George Little.
Bin Laden's long presence in Pakistan -- he was believed
to have stayed there for years -- despite the worldwide manhunt for him raised
suspicions in Washington that Pakistani intelligence officials may have
sheltered him.
Pakistani officials deny this and say an intelligence gap
enabled bin Laden to live here undetected.
No one has yet been charged for helping the al Qaeda
leader take refuge in Pakistan. A government commission tasked with
investigating how he managed to evade capture by Pakistani authorities for so
long is widely accused of being ineffective.
Afridi's imprisonment will almost certainly anger ally
Washington at a sensitive time, with both sides engaged in difficult talks over
re-opening NATO supply routes to U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.
Senior U.S. officials had made public appeals for
Pakistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid, to release
Afridi, detained within weeks of the raid that killed bin Laden and strained
ties with Islamabad.
In January, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a
television interview that Afridi and his team had been key in finding bin
Laden, describing him as helpful and insisting the doctor had not committed
treason or harmed Pakistan.
U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher introduced legislation
in February calling for Afridi to be granted American citizenship and said it
was "shameful and unforgivable that our supposed allies" charged him.
VIOLATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
The U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town
of Abbottabad, just a few hours' drive from the capital Islamabad, humiliated
Pakistan's powerful military, which described the move as a violation of
sovereignty.
Intelligence cooperation between the United States and
Pakistan, vital for the fight against militancy, has subsequently been cut
drastically.
Afridi's prison term could complicate efforts to break a
deadlock in talks over the re-opening of land routes through Pakistan to
U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, which are crucial for supplies.
Pakistan closed the supply routes, also seen as vital to
the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan before the end
of 2014, in protest against last November's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in
a NATO air attack along the Afghan border.
Afridi's case highlighted severe tensions between
Pakistan and the United States.
He was arrested soon after bin Laden was killed, and has
not been publicly heard of since. Seventeen health workers who worked with
Afridi on the vaccination drive were fired in March, according to termination
letters seen by Reuters, which described them as having acted "against the
national interest".
On May 2, one year after bin Laden's death, some of them
appeared at the site where bin Laden's run-down white cement and brick house
stood before it was demolished by Pakistani authorities.
"He (Afridi) was very nice to all the people in the
team and did his job very diligently," Naseem Bibi, one of the health
workers told Reuters, holding one of the notices.
"Yes he was very interested in this house on that
day (of the vaccination drive) but I am not sure why."
The sackings underscored Pakistan's lingering fury over
the bin Laden affair, which exposed the military to rare public criticism, both
because of the presence of the al Qaeda chief in the country, and the fact that
U.S. special forces just swept in and out of the country and faced no
resistance.
*Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON;
Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan