Doctor Accused of Aiding Bin Laden Raid May Face Treason Charge

By Haris Anwar

 (Bloomberg) — A Pakistani commission’s recommendation that treason charges should be brought against a local doctor accused of helping the U.S. track down Osama bin Laden may further strain ties between the two allies.The inquiry team probing the unilateral U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader on May 2 in a house in the Pakistani army town of Abbottabad said yesterday that a case of “conspiracy against the state of Pakistan and high treason” should be filed against the doctor, Shakil Afridi. The panel, headed by a Supreme Court judge, didn’t specify evidence it had gathered against Afridi.

A treason conviction in Pakistan carries the death penalty. The commission, which yesterday questioned the chief of the country’s main spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, is continuing its investigation.

If Afridi had informed authorities of the CIA’s interest in the bin Laden compound the doctor “could have saved Pakistan from that humiliation it faced after the operation,” Javed Hussain, a retired army brigadier, said in a phone interview from Karachi today. “I don’t think he will be able to escape Pakistani courts despite pressure from the U.S.”

Afridi ran a phony vaccination program in the Pakistani town where the al-Qaeda leader hid, in an effort to obtain a DNA sample from him, Associated Press reported.

The commission was formed to investigate how bin Laden lived undetected for up to five years in Abbottabad, just 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Islamabad. The ISI arrested arrested Afridi in May.

Mullen Charges

The detention and prosecution of the doctor may add another element to already troubled relations between the U.S. and Pakistani governments, Hussain said. The Obama administration has called for Afridi to be freed and allowed to live in the U.S., the BBC reported.

Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have soured amid allegations by American officials that the Pakistani government is aiding guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan last month rejected a claim by the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, that the Pakistan-based Haqqani Taliban faction “acts as a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter- Services Intelligence Directorate.

The international medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, in July criticized the U.S. government’s “alleged fake CIA vaccination campaign” undertaken in a clandestine effort to confirm bin Laden’s location. Such activities, the group said in a July 14 statement, undermined legitimate health outreach efforts and endangered health workers around the world.

–With assistance from Mark Williams in New Delhi. Editors: Mark Williams, Sam Nagarajan

To contact the reporter on this story: Haris Anwar in Islamabad at hanwar2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net