Authorities have charged the doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden with murder and fraud, officials and a defence lawyer said on Saturday. "A murder and fraud case was registered against Shakeel Afridi this week after a tribal woman accused him of killing her son," a senior government official in Peshawar told AFP. Afridi's lawyer Samiullah Afridi confirmed the charges, which come some three months after his conviction for treason was overturned.
Afridi was recruited by the CIA to run a fake vaccination programme in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in hopes of obtaining DNA samples to identify al Qaeda chief bin Laden, although medics never managed to gain access to the family. The doctor was arrested after US troops killed bin Laden in Abbottabad in May 2011. In 2012 Afridi was convicted of treason over alleged links to militant group Lashkar-e-Islam, under the tribal justice system of his home district of Khyber. He was sentenced to 33 years in jail and fined $3,500. In August, his sentence was overturned and he now faces a retrial. Afridi's lawyer Samiullah Afridi, who shares his client's tribal name, told AFP on Saturday that the new charges against the doctor were "strange", as the death of which he was accused occurred six years ago.
"How strange it is that authorities registered these cases after six years," the lawyer said, adding that he will defend his client in all the cases. Naseeb Gula, from the north-western tribal district of Khyber, accuses Afridi of killing her son Sulaiman Afridi, who also shares the tribal name, in 2007. She said the doctor operated on her son three times for appendicitis, but that he died after the operation.
She also accused Afridi of fraud, saying he was not authorised to operate on her son because he was not a surgeon. Under the tribal justice system, Afridi faces a life sentence if convicted in the murder case. Punishment for fraud is seven years in jail, his lawyer said. "These new charges are just delaying tactics to keep him in jail as much as possible," Samiullah Afridi told AFP.
A hearing has been fixed for December 20 in the main jail in Peshawar, Afridi's lawyer said. It was decided to hear Afridi's case inside a jail due to security threats, according to a letter written by officials. An official letter seen by AFP and sent to the prison authorities in Peshawar confirmed the registration of murder and fraud cases and asked officials to make arrangements for a hearing. "The accused (Shakeel Afridi) should not be produced in this court due to security reasons," said the letter, sent by a top official in Khyber. "His case would be heard in Peshawar jail premises," it added.