PESHAWAR (PAKISTAN): Shakil Afridi who helped US Navy Seals to track down and kill the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has been languishing in jail since 2011. Americans might wonder how Pakistan could imprison a man who helped track down the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. "The Shakil Afridi saga is the perfect metaphor for US-Pakistan relations" - a growing tangle of mistrust and miscommunication that threatens to jeopardize key efforts against terrorism, said Michael Kugelman, Asia program deputy director at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
The US believes its financial support entitles it to Pakistan's backing in its efforts to defeat the Taliban - as a candidate, Donald Trump pledged to free Afridi, telling in April 2016 he would get him out of prison in "two minutes ... Because we give a lot of aid to Pakistan." But Pakistan is resentful of what it sees as US interference in its affairs.
Mohammed Amir Rana, director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies in Islamabad, said the trust deficit between the two countries is an old story that won't be rewritten until Pakistan and the US revise their expectations of each other, recognize their divergent security concerns and plot an Afghan war strategy, other than the current one which is to both kill and talk to the Taliban.
Afridi hasn't seen his lawyer since 2012 and his wife and children are his only visitors. For two years his file "disappeared," delaying a court appeal that still hasn't proceeded. The courts now say a prosecutor is unavailable, his lawyer, Qamar Nadeem Afridi, said. "Everyone is afraid to even talk about him," and not without reason, said Nadeem, who is also Afridi's cousin.
In Nadeem's office, the wind whistles through a clumsily covered window shattered by a bullet. On another window, clear tape covers a second bullet hole, both from a shooting incident several years ago in which no suspects have been named. Another of Afridi's lawyers was gunned down outside his Peshawar home and a Peshawar jail deputy superintendent, who had advocated on Afridi's behalf, was shot and killed, said Nadeem.
Afridi he has not been charged in connection with the bin Laden operation. He was accused under tribal law alleging he aided and facilitated militants in the nearby Khyber tribal region, said Nadeem. Even the Taliban scoffed at the charge that was filed to make use of Pakistan's antiquated tribal system, which allows closed courts, does not require the defendant to be present in court, and limits the number of appeals, he said.
If charged with treason - which Pakistani authorities say he committed - Afridi would have the right to public hearings and numerous appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, where the details of the bin Laden raid could be laid bare, something neither the civilian nor military establishments want, his lawyer said.
