ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities have shifted Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped the CIA kill Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, from a jail in Peshawar apparently over security concerns, his lawyer Qamar Nadeem said on Saturday.
“I can confirm 95 percent that Afridi has been moved to a prison in Punjab,” Nadeem told Arab News, adding that a tribunal will hear his client’s review petition on May 31.
Afridi’s brother Jamil told Arab News that the family were not told what the security reasons were behind the move from the jail in Peshawar. He said the jail is easily accessible for family members, but the one in Punjab is not.
The inspector general for prisons in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, Shahid Ullah, told Arab News that Afridi was moved on Friday, but refused to say why.
The KP government’s adviser on prisons, Malik Qasim Khattak, said: “It was our longstanding demand to shift Dr. Shakil from Peshawar.” He added that Afridi is a high-profile case, and Peshawar prison is not appropriate for him.
Afridi was arrested in May 2011 after US Special Forces killed bin Laden in a raid on a compound in Abbottabad.
He was sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason, but the sentence was reduced by 10 years after an appeal.
Afridi was working in Abbottabad hospital, and had allegedly used a fake polio vaccination campaign to confirm bin Laden’s presence. But authorities cited Afridi’s alleged links with a banned militant group for his punishment.
He will complete seven years in jail next month. His appeal against his sentence is scheduled to be heard on May 31.
Afridi’s lawyer rebuffed the authorities’ reported claim about security concerns, saying: “Peshawar is more secure than jails in Punjab as it’s located near several high-security buildings and the Peshawar military corps.”
Afridi’s arrest has been a major irritant in US-Pakistani relations, as Islamabad has rejected repeated American calls to free the convict, who is considered a hero in the US but a traitor by many in Pakistan.
Jailed Pakistani doctor who helped CIA kill bin Laden moved over ‘security concerns’ — Lawyer
Jailed Pakistani doctor who helped CIA kill bin Laden moved over ‘security concerns’ — Lawyer
- Shakil Afridi has been languishing in prison for almost eight years after his fake vaccination program helped US agents track and kill the Al-Qaeda leader
- Top prison official in KP says Afridi was moved by intelligence officials to the safer place due to security reasons late Thursday
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
