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Analysis: Dr Afridi: Enemy of the state?
Ismail Khan
File photo
Updated 2014-03-22 08:12:45
Dr Shakil Afridi’s confessional statement reads like a page straight out of a cold war spy novel: how the Central Intelligence Agency recruited him and how his handlers, in some cases women, transported him — covered in a blanket and ducked in the backseat of a car — from outside a bookshop in the Jinnah Super Market to a built-in container office.
He was sent on a wild goose chase before given a more specific task in Abbottabad to collect samples in a fake vaccination campaign to help track down the elusive Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. But, if Dr Afridi is to be believed, he had a hunch he was on to something big, though never did his CIA handlers tell him who it was — until the morning of May 2, 2011 when he was woken up by a caller from Islamabad. They had got the man they had been hunting since 9/11. It was time Dr Afridi pack up and leave for Kabul.
And he would have gone had his wife not stopped him, an investigator recalled. “Have you done anything wrong?” the officer quoted Dr Afridi’s wife as asking him. Puzzled, the 50-year-old physician from Bara, Khyber tribal region, decided to stay on. Equally puzzled were those who wanted to punish Dr Afridi for helping his foreign spymasters and bringing shame and embarrassment to his country — an issue that dodges Pakistan even today.
The problem was that Pakistan was supposed to be a US ally, actively engaged with ‘friends’ to track down Bin Laden. If Dr Afridi was to be charged with supporting a foreign intelligence agency, what would become of the US-Pakistan alliance in the war on terror?
Months after he was picked up in Karkhano bazaar near Peshawar following the Operation Neptune Spear that resulted in Bin Laden’s takedown, senior officials mulled Dr Afridi’s fate. That he was an embarrassment and a disgrace to the nation, it was agreed. But how to frame charges against him, they wondered.
And in a bizarre decision they decided to accuse him of collaborating with the outlawed Lashkar-i-Islam — an outfit that had earlier kidnapped him and released him upon payment of ransom.
A year later, he was produced before the court of the Bara assistant political agent and was sentenced to 33 years imprisonment for supporting Lashkar-i-Islam, despite ‘evidence’ of his collaboration with the CIA and Dr Afridi’s confessional statement, detailing his meetings with his handlers and the payments he had received for different tasks and assignments. The Bara assistant political agent simply said he was not competent to hear the espionage charges.
Nearly a year later, an appellate court (FCR commissioner) upheld the verdict of the lower court but reduced Dr Afridi’s sentence. But, in another bizarre twist, the appellate court directed the political agent to prepare a case against Dr Afridi for his involvement in anti-state activities by supporting a foreign intelligence agency for further proceedings before a competent court.
If these twists in the case were not baffling enough, more puzzling is the directive to the Khyber political agent to “adduce the evidence in consultation with the concerned intelligence agencies and prepare a case” against Dr Afridi both under federal and provincial laws for further proceedings in the competent court of law.
Are we back to square one? Dr Afridi was arrested for an offence he had committed in Abbottabad under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government. With purported evidence at hand, the case against him would have been tight. But instead of pressing criminal charges against him for supporting a foreign intelligence service in Abbottabad, he was prosecuted under the Frontier Crimes Regulations.
And now again the appellate court wants the Khyber political agent to provide evidence of Dr Afridi’s collaboration with the CIA to a competent court, ostensibly for an offence that has occurred not in Khyber tribal region but in Abbottabad. Does this involve the issue of jurisdiction? And which competent court would the case go to now?
More importantly, why did the Bara assistant political agent cite jurisdiction as an issue for not trying and convicting Afridi on espionage charges and why has the appellate court come to that conclusion now?
The bigger question perhaps is: will the political administration now cite spying charges against Dr Afridi which, if pressed, may keep him in jail longer? With his appeal turned down by the appellate court, Dr Afridi’s next recourse would be a review before the three-member Fata tribunal comprising two retired bureaucrats and a lawyer. If history is any guide, Dr Afridi’s fate is more or less sealed.
Ismail Khan
File photo
Updated 2014-03-22 08:12:45
Dr Shakil Afridi’s confessional statement reads like a page straight out of a cold war spy novel: how the Central Intelligence Agency recruited him and how his handlers, in some cases women, transported him — covered in a blanket and ducked in the backseat of a car — from outside a bookshop in the Jinnah Super Market to a built-in container office.
He was sent on a wild goose chase before given a more specific task in Abbottabad to collect samples in a fake vaccination campaign to help track down the elusive Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. But, if Dr Afridi is to be believed, he had a hunch he was on to something big, though never did his CIA handlers tell him who it was — until the morning of May 2, 2011 when he was woken up by a caller from Islamabad. They had got the man they had been hunting since 9/11. It was time Dr Afridi pack up and leave for Kabul.
And he would have gone had his wife not stopped him, an investigator recalled. “Have you done anything wrong?” the officer quoted Dr Afridi’s wife as asking him. Puzzled, the 50-year-old physician from Bara, Khyber tribal region, decided to stay on. Equally puzzled were those who wanted to punish Dr Afridi for helping his foreign spymasters and bringing shame and embarrassment to his country — an issue that dodges Pakistan even today.
The problem was that Pakistan was supposed to be a US ally, actively engaged with ‘friends’ to track down Bin Laden. If Dr Afridi was to be charged with supporting a foreign intelligence agency, what would become of the US-Pakistan alliance in the war on terror?
Months after he was picked up in Karkhano bazaar near Peshawar following the Operation Neptune Spear that resulted in Bin Laden’s takedown, senior officials mulled Dr Afridi’s fate. That he was an embarrassment and a disgrace to the nation, it was agreed. But how to frame charges against him, they wondered.
And in a bizarre decision they decided to accuse him of collaborating with the outlawed Lashkar-i-Islam — an outfit that had earlier kidnapped him and released him upon payment of ransom.
A year later, he was produced before the court of the Bara assistant political agent and was sentenced to 33 years imprisonment for supporting Lashkar-i-Islam, despite ‘evidence’ of his collaboration with the CIA and Dr Afridi’s confessional statement, detailing his meetings with his handlers and the payments he had received for different tasks and assignments. The Bara assistant political agent simply said he was not competent to hear the espionage charges.
Nearly a year later, an appellate court (FCR commissioner) upheld the verdict of the lower court but reduced Dr Afridi’s sentence. But, in another bizarre twist, the appellate court directed the political agent to prepare a case against Dr Afridi for his involvement in anti-state activities by supporting a foreign intelligence agency for further proceedings before a competent court.
If these twists in the case were not baffling enough, more puzzling is the directive to the Khyber political agent to “adduce the evidence in consultation with the concerned intelligence agencies and prepare a case” against Dr Afridi both under federal and provincial laws for further proceedings in the competent court of law.
Are we back to square one? Dr Afridi was arrested for an offence he had committed in Abbottabad under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government. With purported evidence at hand, the case against him would have been tight. But instead of pressing criminal charges against him for supporting a foreign intelligence service in Abbottabad, he was prosecuted under the Frontier Crimes Regulations.
And now again the appellate court wants the Khyber political agent to provide evidence of Dr Afridi’s collaboration with the CIA to a competent court, ostensibly for an offence that has occurred not in Khyber tribal region but in Abbottabad. Does this involve the issue of jurisdiction? And which competent court would the case go to now?
More importantly, why did the Bara assistant political agent cite jurisdiction as an issue for not trying and convicting Afridi on espionage charges and why has the appellate court come to that conclusion now?
The bigger question perhaps is: will the political administration now cite spying charges against Dr Afridi which, if pressed, may keep him in jail longer? With his appeal turned down by the appellate court, Dr Afridi’s next recourse would be a review before the three-member Fata tribunal comprising two retired bureaucrats and a lawyer. If history is any guide, Dr Afridi’s fate is more or less sealed.
