Peshawar // Five years after his fake vaccination programme helped the CIA track and kill Osama bin Laden, Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi languishes in jail.
Supporters claim the US has abandoned him in its bid to smooth troubled relations with Islamabad.
Dr Afridi, believed to be in his mid-50s, has no access to a lawyer, and his appeal against a 23-year prison sentence has stalled.
“I have no hope of meeting him, no expectation for justice,” his elder brother Jamil said.
The former senior surgeon lives in solitary confinement in a small room, according to his lawyer, able to see his immediate family no more than six times a year.
Dr Afridi’s role in one of the most famous assassinations of recent decades is murky, as are details of how he was sought out by the Central Intelligence Agency.
What is known is that Dr Afridi’s job was to run a fake Hepatitis C vaccination program with the aim of obtaining genetic samples from Abbottabad, a garrison city and home to the Pakistan Military Academy.
It was there that Al Qaeda chief bin Laden and his family had set up home in the mid-2000s, under the noses – and some say protection – of senior Pakistani military officers.
On May 2, 2011, two helicopters full of elite Navy Seals touched down inside the compound.
In a raid just one kilometre from the military academy, they fought their way in, shot him in the head and fled with his body.
The killing decapitated Al Qaeda, badly hampering the organisation’s ability to carry out further atrocities.
But it drove a wedge between Islamabad and Washington, with lingering suspicions that the Pakistanis had for years been covering up the whereabouts of one the world’s most wanted men.
Weeks after the raid, Dr Afridi was arrested and thrown in jail, accused of having ties to militants, a charge he has always denied.
Commentators believe Pakistan opted to punish Dr Afridi in this way, rather than try him for treason – aiding a foreign power – because that would have entailed a public trial that would thrown a spotlight on Islamabad’s role in harbouring bin Laden.
A furious US senate committee voted to cut aid to Islamabad by $33 million (Dh121m)– $1 million for each year of his original sentence.
The sentence was later cut by 10 years from 33 years.
But since then, US pressure for Dr Afridi’s release has tapered off, and analysts say Washington has dropped the issue, preferring to concentrate on what its sees as more pressing matters such as negotiating with extremists in Afghanistan.
“The Taliban talks have taken priority over everything. The Americans don’t want to muddy the water by raising other issues that are contentious,” says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and security expert.
Dr Afridi’s lawyer who has been denied access to him for the past two years, believes his client’s best hope for early release is US pressure. “But so far they have not shown their support,” Qamar Nadeem says.
He is allowed to see his wife and children every two months or so, according to Mr Nadeem.
Though elder brother Jamil and his siblings won a Peshawar High Court decision granting them visiting rights, that verdict has not been implemented, and he has been told by his lawyer that pursuing the matter could result in harm to the doctor.
“They are not admitting the High Court decision. What can I say? I am pessimistic,” he said.
* Agence France-Presse
