US to press for release of Pakistani doctor who ran a fake vaccination programme, as part of CIA's "hunt for Osama bin Laden"
CIA's asset, Dr.Shakil Afridi
The US has said it will press for the release of a Pakistani doctor who has been jailed for 33 years for running a fake CIA vaccination programme as part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
But even as senior American politicians denounced the sentence as "outrageous", the Obama administration shied away from strong comment on the trial itself as officials said that the legal process is not at an end. Officials are hoping that the sentence can be shortened or overturned on appeal. Two US senators, John McCain and Carl Levin, denounced Afridi's conviction and demanded his immediate release. The sentence was announced just days after Barack Obama snubbed the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, by refusing to hold a formal meeting with him at the Nato conference in Chicago. US intelligence officials say the clandestine operation by Afridi did not succeed in determining whether Bin Laden was in the house and the raid went ahead without any certainty that the Navy Seal team would find its target. However, Pakistani security officials recently told the Guardian that although the nurses working for Afridi were not allowed inside the house to vaccinate any of the children, they did succeed in getting a mobile phone number for someone in the house. The Pakistani sources say that phone call allowed the CIA to make a voice match to Bin Laden's private courier, a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
The Guardian: CIA's fake vaccination programme criticised by Médecins Sans Frontières
KPLU 88.5: Did CIA undermine global health by faking vaccines in hunt for Bin Laden?
The CIA's fake vaccination program in Pakistan reveals the moral bankruptcy of American spooks