A PAKISTANI doctor who helped the CIA pin down Osama bin Laden's location under the cover of a vaccination drive has been convicted of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.

A tribal court in north-western Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region. Along with the prison term, the court imposed a fine of about $3600. Afridi, who may appeal the verdict, was then sent to Central Prison in Peshawar.

Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi has been sentenced to 33 years in jail for treason. Credit:REUTERS

He had been charged under an archaic British-era regulation for frontier crimes that unlike the national criminal code does not carry the death penalty for treason. Under Pakistani penal law, Afridi almost certainly would have received the death penalty, a Pakistani lawyer said.

Afridi's fate has been an added source of tension between Pakistan and the United States, at a time when the countries remain at loggerheads over reopening supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan.