Dr Shakil Afridi’s chapter is closed, ISI chief to US

ISLAMABAD: The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s premier spymaster, has ruled out Dr Shakil Afridi’s barter with Dr Afia Siddiqui, Geo News reported.

Director General ISI, Lt General Zaheeer-ul-Islam, in a media briefing here, unequivocally made it clear it that the chapter of Dr Shakil Afridi, who helped US kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, has been closed.

“US better forget him (Afridi) as he is never going to leave here, he will never be traded for Dr Afia Siddiqui, no such proposition is under consideration”, said he.

To a question he said that the death of Badruddin Haqqani awaits confirmation.

Going forward he termed his US visit as positive, adding, it helped improve ties with CIA, the US spy agency.

Dr Shakil Afridi is a physician who helped the CIA run a fake vaccine program in Abbottabad, in order to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence in the city by obtaining DNA samples.

Details of the doctor's activities emerged during the Pakistani investigation of the deadly raid on Bin Laden's residence.

He was arrested from Torkham border while trying to escape the country days after the raid. On 23 May 2012, Shakil Afridi was sentenced to 33 years imprisonment for treason, initially believed to be in connection with the Bin Laden raid but later revealed to be due to ties with a local Islamist warlord Mangal Bagh.

Whereas Aafia Siddiqui is an American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist.

Not long after the September 11 attacks, Dr. Siddiqui left the United States for Pakistan in 2002. Since the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003 in Rawalpindi, by the Inter-Services Intelligence, he has stated he gave names of innocent people under torture to "please his captors". Siddiqui’s lawyers believe her name was one of these.

After she was named by him, Siddiqui disappeared for five years.

She reappeared in Afghanistan under detention in 2008. Although authorities claimed she was found in possession of bomb-making instructions and materiel (including sodium cyanide) at the time of her arrest in Afghanistan, Dr. Siddiqui was not charged for any terrorist-related activities.

Instead she was tried and convicted in U.S. federal court for assault with intent to murder her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan - charges that carried a maximum sentence of life in prison. Siddiqui was ultimately sentenced by a United States district court to 86 years in prison in a trial that critics have called "a grave miscarriage of justice".