How Shakeel Afridi is being treated in prison
Shakeel Afridi is one such character that can appear to be a villain if you if you want to see it that way, but also a hero of a sort to many more. His role in gathering intelligence for the lead up to the operation that killed Osama bin Laden is praised by the US though there are not so many takers of this idea in Pakistan. Here he is considered a traitor, someone who collaborated with outside forces, even if it was meant for a greater good. However, sentiments are not what the governments are run on; it is the law that takes precedence over everything else.
It is in this sense that one must question as to why he is not being treated well in the prison he is being kept at. Reportedly, he is on a hunger strike because if maltreatment he is getting at the hands of his jail staff. What his family alleges, if taken at face value, is against basic human rights that he has been denied visitation rights and also denied to meet his counsel. That he is on a hunger strike, as it is one of the last options a prisoner would resort to, gives credence to the allegations levelled by his family and his counsel. One can also contest that his trial was a sham of legal proceedings considering that there were a number of lacunas in the proceedings. That his trial ended in a day doesn’t help matters much either, and that he was convicted on having links with a banned religious militant outfit after the authorities failed to find any proof of his involvement in the Osama bin Laden operation, and then there is the legal abuse of powers by the magistrate who wasn’t legally authorised to award more than three years of punishment but sentenced Mr Afridi to 33 years of prison.
All these problems aside, what is really worrying at the moment is the treatment he is being meted with. This is no way of treating a prisoner, who if not now, might in the future just be given the avatar of a hero, if and when we decide to stop appeasing the militants and take a stand against them. The country is already under the lights, and not in a good fashion after an attack on Sarabjit Singh in a prison in Lahore, for treating its prisoners with lax security and giving them a tough time. This equates to denying prisoners their basic human rights, which sort of puts every convention and law on human rights in jeopardy. The authorities must make sure that no prisoner is treated that way, let alone a high profile one.