PESHAWAR: Security personnel on Sunday moved Dr Shakil Afridi, a doctor who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound, from Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail to Punjab’s Sahiwal prison amid tight security.
This is the second such switch this year as he was shifted to Adiala Jail from Peshawar in April 2018. A surgeon from Khyber district, Afridi ran a phony vaccination campaign in Abbottabad to help the US intelligence agency trace Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011.
In 2012, he was sentenced 33-years imprisonment and slapped with Rs320,000 fine for links with banned militant groups.
The sentence was handed down by the political administration of Khyber district under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) – the colonial-era laws that governed Pakistan’s tribal regions before the 31st Constitutional Amendment that merged Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
In 2014, the FCR commissioner commuted Afridi’s conviction by 10 years and reduced the fine by Rs1 million
After spending several years in a Peshawar prison, Afridi was moved to Adiala Jail upon requests from the provincial government. The K-P government maintained that the surgeon’s life was in danger in the Peshawar prison since it also housed hardcore Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants.
The request had been denied by the federal government for a long time before finally moving him in April 2018.
