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The Spectacle Blog
From the Wall Street Journal:
LAHORE—A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency track down Osama bin Laden was sentenced to 33 years in prison, officials said, a decision that will further strain relations with the U.S.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, established a vaccination program at the CIA’s request in Abbottabad, a Pakistan garrison town where bin Laden was living. The plan was to collect DNA from residents of the compound where the U.S. suspected bin Laden was hiding.
Pakistani authorities arrested Dr. Afridi shortly after U.S. forces killed the al Qaeda leader in a raid on his compound a year ago. Leon Panetta, who was CIA director at the time, appealed to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari for the release of Dr. Afridi on a visit to Pakistan after the raid. CIA officials also worked intensively with Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the U.S. to gain the doctor’s release.
U.S. officials had expected that Dr. Afridi would be set free after questioning. But Pakistan instead launched an investigation and continued to hold him.
“The doctor was never asked to spy on Pakistan. He was asked only to help locate al Qaeda terrorists, who threaten Pakistan and the U.S.,” said a senior U.S. official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda in Pakistan. “He helped save Pakistani and American lives. His activities weren’t treasonous, they were heroic and patriotic. “
Dr. Afridi was convicted in a secretive sentencing in the Khyber tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, where the case could be kept out of the public eye.
Pakistan’s tribal regions are governed under a special set of laws that date to the British colonial era and give wide-ranging powers to a government-appointed political agent, including the right to sentence people to time in jail…
An official with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate military spy agency contested the U.S. view that Dr. Afridi was a patriot. “He wasn’t serving Pakistan. He was serving Americans,” the official said.
No surprise that an ISI official would talk as if Pakistan and the US aren’t allies; as Eli Lake explained in a New Republic feature on the Pakistani “deep state” last year, elements of the ISI are allied with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and those same elements have helped support a terrorist safe haven the tribal regions where Afridi was sentenced. One of Eli’s sources put it this way: “Imagine if the CIA was supporting the drug cartels of Mexico over the wishes of the Congress and the White House… That’s what we have in Pakistan.”
But in that situation, it would be incumbent on the government to arrest those rogue pro-cartel agents. If the Pakistani government can’t or won’t curtail its anti-American security apparatus — if it doesn’t even protect someone like Dr. Afridi — at what point is the government itself, for all intents and purposes, our enemy?
View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/05/23/33-years-in-prison-for-helping
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Clip of the Day
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Clint| 5.23.12 @ 11:23PM
" Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA's) Osama bin Laden unit, told the U.K. Daily Telegraph in a recent interview he was prevented from capturing or killing the terrorist by his superiors on at least 10 separate occasions.
In 1995, Scheuer was selected to lead the spy agency’s bin Laden efforts. By then the militant Islamist was exiled in Sudan after angering Saudi authorities. Bin Laden was running several businesses in the African nation that Scheuer suggested disrupting. “We formulated operations and submitted them for approval but they would not approve any of them,” the ex-CIA official told the Daily Telegraph. “If we had been able to deal a serious economic blow it could have been a show-stopper.”
Scheuer told the Telegraph that following the missed opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden in 1998, there were at least eight other chances to get the terror mastermind. By that point, bin Laden was supposedly among the U.S. government’s most wanted criminals. But for some unknown reason, senior officials refused to authorize his capture or assassination.
“One 50-cent round could have put us all out of our agony,” Scheuer explained. But that didn’t happen, as high-level authorities consistently ordered the CIA unit not to stop bin Laden."
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.23.12 @ 11:27PM
Suppose, instead, that while our government and the Mexican government were claiming that the Mexican drug cartels were illegally arming themselves with firearms purchased in the U.S., the U.S. Department of Justice was aiding, in violation of U.S. law, Mexican drug cartels to illegally purchase firearms in the U.S. , and then smuggle them across the border and/or use them for criminal activity in both countries, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Mexican nationals and at least one U.S. agent.
Oh, wait, we’ve got that already.
Bob S| 5.23.12 @ 11:44PM
You can bet that this won't diminish aid to Pakistan at all. Even if Congress votes to cut aid to Pakistan, Obama will override saying it's in our "national security interest", even when those who help the US capture terrorists are arrested and put away by the Pakistani government.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.23.12 @ 11:50PM
...all while he pronounces it Pock EE stahn...
ncatty| 5.24.12 @ 9:16AM
Wait a minute. Why and how did the work of Dr. Afridi become public knowledge?
johnd2| 5.24.12 @ 9:43AM
Dont know what , but the big shots in Pakistan have to be running at least a double double cross on the US and NATO. There have to be many sleazy backroom scams going on. This doctor's help in finding Bin Laden no doubt uncovered a lot of other dirty deeds. They may have called it treason, but he was likely punished for that so nobody else would do the same thing to embarass them in front of the gullible westerners.
Occam's Tool| 5.24.12 @ 11:55PM
People keep telling me I'm a genocidal guy when I advocate 5 megaton nuke strikes. India would have difficulty taking out Pakistan's nuke power, but we wouldn't. I don't think they have the necessary ICBMs, either. 1500 miles is what they have. We are farther than that away.
Lessons must be taught to these vermin, impressed on their skin.
David| 5.25.12 @ 12:47PM
HUH? So a Dr, goes around collecting the DNA of it's citizens and then hands them over to a FOREIGN GOVERNMENT and this author doesnt see a problem with that?
Why don't the CIA produce any video survellence of BIN LADEN?
Why don't the CIA product any PHOTO/VIDEO of the BIN LADEN body?
Why not write an article about how GWB murder millions of IRAQIS all on lies?
More interesting is how on 911 the FDNY identified NUMEROUS TIMES, the second plane to be a military plane.
You can see it with your own eyes here.
youtube com/watch?v=JBBOYHayDps&feature=plcp
David| 5.25.12 @ 12:48PM
More interesting is how on 911 the FDNY identified NUMEROUS TIMES, the second plane to HIT THE WTC was a military plane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ature=plcp
David| 5.25.12 @ 12:48PM
More interesting is how on 911 the FDNY identified NUMEROUS TIMES, the second plane to HIT THE WTC was a military plane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ature=plcp