Pakistan rubbishes Afridi’s ISI tirade

Pakistan on Tuesday rubbished an interview of Dr Shakil Afridi, convicted for helping the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sniffing out and eliminating al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, saying the allegations were intended to destabilize Pakistan-US relations.
“Afridi’s purported interview to Fox News is devoid of facts and completely baseless. The timing of this interview with the 9/11 anniversary is an evidence of anti-Pakistan elements’ efforts to harm Pakistan-US relations,” a senior security official told Pakistan Today.
In an interview to Fox News, Afridi alleged that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) considers the US its “worst enemy” and Islamabad’s cooperation with Washington was just a sham to extract billions of dollars in aid.
The controversial news channel broadcast only the transcript of the purported exclusive, but did not indicate whether it was a video or audio interview. It also does not say how its reporter managed to enter Peshawar Jail or meet Dr Afridi. “They said ‘The Americans are our worst enemies, worse than the Indians’,” Afridi was quoted as saying.
“I tried to argue that America was Pakistan’s biggest supporter – billions and billions of dollars in aid, social and military assistance — but all they said was, ‘These are our worst enemies. You helped our enemies’,” he said.
According to Fox, Afridi accused the ISI of funding militants. “It is now indisputable that militancy in Pakistan is supported by the ISI … Pakistan’s fight against militancy is bogus. It’s just to extract money from America,” he said. Afridi claimed that he was first detained in the basement of ISI’s headquarters in Islamabad, where he was tortured with cigarette burns and electric shocks and ISI officers attacked him for assisting the US.
He also described “a regime of perpetual torture and interrogation for large numbers of detainees”, some of whom include white western male converts to Islam caught while travelling to Afghanistan to fight NATO troops or to join militant camps in FATA. One of the officers who allegedly interrogated him had also escorted an American official visiting from Washington to an interview with a highly sought militant, Abdul Karim Agha, in November 2011.
Agha had later told him that an ISI officer had whispered instructions in his ear as he walked into the interrogation room to feign sudden illness so he could not be interviewed.
“I was told by others that the ISI advises militants to make things up to tell CIA interrogators, pretend this and that,” Fox News quoted Afridi as saying. Afridi said before he was moved to Peshawar in May, he met Abdul Kayyum, the nephew of a chief of the Wazir tribe, who had been apprehended by the ISI for reasons that were unclear. Afridi said there were many militants of different nationalities, often Afghans, held at Aabpara. Arab detainees were given “first-class treatment and first-class food”, while some radicalized westerners were singled out for abuse. “The militants were told by the ISI, ‘According to the Americans, we’re supposed to arrest you. We don’t want anything to do with you, but will support you by letting you go. Go back to Afghanistan and steer clear of the Americans.’ And then they would be released.”