Doctor accused of helping CIA find Osama bin Laden should be charged with high treason, says Pakistani state commission

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA to track down Osama bin Laden should be charged with high treason, a Pakistani state commission has recommended.

The finding against Dr Shakeel Afridi, who allegedly ran a fake Hepatitis B vaccination scheme in Abbottabad at the behest of the CIA, is likely to further complicate relations between Pakistan and the US.

Afridi was picked up by Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) three weeks after the raid on May 2 in which the fugitive al-Qaida leader was killed, and he has been held without access to a lawyer ever since.

The US has pressured Pakistan to release Afridi into American custody, saying he helped locate the most wanted fugitive on earth. But Pakistani spies, furious at being humiliated by the CIA, have indicated Afridi would have to face the full force of the law.

In a statement, the four-man government commission which was set up to investigate the killing of Bin Laden, and which is led by a supreme court judge, said it was of the view that "prima facie, a case of conspiracy against the state of Pakistan and high treason" should be made against Afridi.

The finding came hours after it conducted an "exhaustive interview" with the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha, it said. The commission interviewed Afridi earlier in the week.

The commission also announced it was ending restrictions on Bin Laden's wives and children, who have been in custody since the raid, potentially opening the way for their repatriation to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

The ISI has been at the centre of most US-Pakistan tensions this year. US critics questioned whether Pakistani spies had been aware of Bin Laden's presence in Pakistan. More recently, the ISI has also been accused of secretly supporting the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network on the Afghan border.

President Barack Obama said he was concerned by the ISI's ties to "unsavoury characters", but he said he was not about to cut off aid to Pakistan.

Afridi was employed as a senior government doctor in the Khyber tribal agency, and is believed to have set up the CIA vaccination programme in Abbottabad earlier this year.

Since the attack on Bin Laden, the ISI has cracked down on international aid agencies working in Pakistan, with officials trying to find out if any aid workers are secretly moonlighting for intelligence agencies.

The aid agency Save the Children has suffered the most severe repercussions, with senior expatriate staff forced to evacuate the country for two weeks in July following a warning from US officials.

Afridi appears to have used Save the Children as cover for his work, telling his wife that he working on a project for them when he was in fact working for the CIA, according to a senior western official.

Save the Children has vehemently denied any links with the fake vaccination programme but says it may have been unfairly targeted because Afridi twice attended training courses run by the aid agency.

The CIA has rejected criticism by aid workers that its vaccination programme was unethical. "It was conducted by genuine medical professionals who planned to provide everyone with the full course of treatments," a senior US official with knowledge of the programme told the Guardian.

"No one should be threatening or harassing or rounding up medical personnel on the ground in Pakistan. The damage here was caused by locals reacting to the mistaken idea that this was a fake public health effort."

Health workers in Abbottabad say the CIA programme had in many cases administered just one vaccination shot out of three to local children before it was closed down.

The US official said: "The reality, also, is that this program was part of an effort to pinpoint the location of a man who was himself a menace to public health worldwide."

The Pakistani commission directed that Bin Laden's house in Abbottabad should be handed over to the local civil administration "for disposal in accordance with relevant law".

Just what that means in practice is unclear.

Speculation has swirled around the house for months; some analysts believe it may ultimately be razed.