Pakistan shifts doctor who aided Osama hunt to ‘safe location’

Islamabad : Shakil Afridi, a doctor who helped the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) track down Osama bin Laden, has been moved out of a prison in Peshawar to an undisclosed ‘safe location’ in another city, the media reported.

Afridi had been imprisoned in the Central Prison Peshawar for almost seven years after he ran a phoney vaccination campaign in Abbottabad city to help the CIA track down and kill the former Al Qaeda chief in a controversial raid on May 2, 2011.

A year later, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison for involvement in anti-state activities by a tribal court.

Speaking to the Express Tribune, an official of the Peshawar prison said that a large number of police as well as Army contingent reached the prison on Friday and took Afridi away amid tight security.

The official said he had no idea where the prisoner had been shifted. Another official said Afridi had most probably been moved out of the province.

According to the daily’s report, the provincial government had been demanding the federal government to move Afridi away from the Peshawar prison as hardcore Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants had also been kept in the same prison and his life was in danger.

The federal government for a long time declined to shift Afridi, but on Friday he was taken away in a sudden move.

Published on April 28, 2018 at 16:03 IST

IANS