Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday sacked the
government doctor who had helped CIA track down Osama bin
Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad in May last year,
amid calls for trying him for treason.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti
sacked the doctor, Shakeel Afridi, on disciplinary grounds
under his discretionary powers.
The provincial government issued a notification for the
dismissal of Afridi, officials said.
As many as 17 medics who worked on a fake vaccination
programme set up by the CIA to confirm that the al Qaeda chief
was living in Abbottabad were sacked earlier.
Afridi is currently in the custody of security agencies
and Pakistan has spurned calls from the US for his release.
Earlier, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had said Afridi
worked for US intelligence by collecting DNA to verify the
9/11 mastermind`s presence in Pakistan. He had expressed
concern over reports that Afridi could be tried for treason.
"He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan,"
Panetta had told CBS television.
Bin Laden, 54, world`s most wanted terrorist, was killed
in a clandestine US raid in his compound located a short
distance from the elite Pakistan Military Academy.
Afridi worked as a government doctor in the lawless Khyber
tribal region.
A judicial commission investigating bin Laden`s presence
in Pakistan and the US raid has recommended that Afridi should
be tried for treason.
British newspaper The Guardian reported in July last year
that Afridi set up a fake vaccination programme in the hope of
obtaining DNA samples from the compound where the CIA
suspected bin Laden was living.
PTI
