'No deal' on doctor jailed for leading US to Osama bin Laden

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Shakil Afridi, 3rd from left, and Jamil Afridi, Shakeel’s elder brother, with their children.
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Updated 11 September 2017
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'No deal' on doctor jailed for leading US to Osama bin Laden

ISLAMABAD: To Americans, he is the hero who helped them hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. To Pakistanis, he is a villain who betrayed his country. On one thing, however, both countries are agreed; Dr Shakil Afridi will not be released from prison any time soon.
“There’s no deal on Afridi,” a US State Department official said. And a retired Pakistani intelligence officer who helped to investigate the raid in which bin Laden was killed said: “There’s no agreement, and there won’t be for the foreseeable future.”
Indeed, in the opinion of the intelligence officer, the jailed doctor is lucky to be alive. “Had he been convicted of conspiring against the state and aiding a foreign country, he would have been sentenced to death.”
Afridi, 54, helped the CIA to run a fake hepatitis B vaccination program aimed at confirming bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by collecting DNA samples.
A few days after US special forces raided the bin Laden compound on May 2, 2011, and killed the Al-Qaeda leader, Afridi was arrested. A year later he was sentenced to 33 years in prison for colluding with terrorists.
The conviction was overturned on a technicality, and a retrial ordered, but in November 2013 Afridi was charged with murder over the death of a patient eight years before, and he has been prison ever since. The next hearing in his case will be on September 28.
The Afridi affair has contributed to a souring in relations between Washington and Islamabad, dating back to the presidency of Barack Obama. Legislation was introduced into the US Congress to award Afridi a Congressional Gold Medal and make him a naturalised US citizen, and in 2014 a Senate panel cut aid to Pakistan by $33 million – $1m for each year of the doctor’s sentence.
Last year, Donald Trump said he could have Afridi released “in two minutes.” Pakistan’s interior minister at the time, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, replied that the US president “should learn to treat sovereign states with respect.”
Afridi, he said, “is a Pakistani citizen, and nobody else has the right to dictate to us his future. Trump’s perception and his comments about Pakistan are highly misplaced and unwarranted.”
And this week the US Embassy in Islamabad told Arab News: “We believe Dr Afridi has been unjustly imprisoned and we have clearly communicated our position to Pakistan on Dr Afridi’s case, both in public and in private. We continue to raise this issue at the highest levels during discussions with Pakistan’s leadership. Pakistan has assured us that Dr Afridi is being treated humanely and is in good health.”
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Afridi was detained by Pakistani security officials 20 days after the bin Laden raid, when his phone number was discovered on a cell phone at the Al-Qaeda leader’s compound. He was interrogated first in Peshawar, then in Islamabad for nearly a year.

 


 

The revelations about the fake hepatitis B vaccinations had unintended consequences. Militants denounced a crucial and life-saving polio inoculation campaign as “American poison,” and killed health workers administering the medication. In September 2012, while in prison, Afridi asked that a press release be distributed saying that his vaccination campaign was not fake, and was unconnected with polio, in hopes of reassuring the public.
There is considerable doubt about whether his collection of DNA samples actually identified bin Laden, but CIA spies were alerted when one of Afridi’s nurses used the doctor’s phone to contact bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmad Alkuwaiti. The courier’s “voice was well known” to the US intelligence community, and the contact reinforced the CIA’s view that the compound held a “high priority individual.”
After the raid, Afridi’s female CIA handlers urged him several times to leave Pakistan. He held a valid US visa, but was reluctant to travel with his wife and three children through hostile tribal territory where he had been abducted by militants in 2008. In the end, he decided to stay because there was a problem with his wife’s visa. It was to prove his undoing. 
On May 23, 2012, after 12 months in detention, Afridi was taken from Islamabad to Peshawar, sentenced to 33 years in prison and denied the legal right to a defense. 
His lawyer, Qamar Nadeem, and Afridi’s brother were allowed to meet him in prison under tight monitoring, until an interview he gave to two reporters from Fox News was published on September 10, 2012. A few days later, everyone, including Afridi’s family and lawyers, were barred from meeting him. Reports emerged that he was on hunger strike.

 

On November 20, 2013, a letter from Afridi written on a torn biscuit carton was smuggled out of prison. “My legal right to consult with my lawyers is being denied,” Afridi wrote. He decried his isolated confinement, and asked: “What sort of court and justice is this?” It is the last known correspondence from the doctor..

 

 

Afridi’s lawyer, Nadeem, last met his client in August 2012.  “Since then we haven’t been able to meet him,” he said, despite a high court order reinstating access. “The State wanted to stop Afridi from speaking out. therefore a ban to meet him was put in effect. But things have become more relaxed, and his family are allowed to meet him every month or so.”
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A year after Afridi was sentenced, there were reports of an agreement to exchange him for Dr Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani-born, US-educated neurosurgeon serving 86 years in a maximum-security medical detention center in Fort Worth, Texas. 
Siddiqui, 45, known in the US as “Lady Al-Qaeda,” was arrested in Afghanistan by American forces in July 2008, and convicted in 2010 on seven counts of attempted murder and assault of US military personnel.
Both the US and Pakistan denied the exchange reports. “Whether there was a deal previously, I don’t know,” said the State Department official. The Pakistani intelligence officer said a swap was “out of the question. She clearly was an Al-Qaeda associate. We won’t negotiate a terrorist for a traitor.”
Afridi’s lawyer, Nadeem, said Siddiqui’s representative contacted him to discuss a possible exchange. “I told her I needed to consult Afridi’s family members and my team before giving any response. We couldn’t move forward on it and the representative abandoned further efforts.”
Meanwhile Nadeem is working pro bono in the hope that someone will foot the mounting legal costs. The lawyer’s legal fees are not the only potential loss. Involvement in the Afridi case can be fatal. Nadeem’s colleague was murdered by the Taliban for defending Afridi, and the commissioner who ordered a retrial died in a gas explosion. 
The only support Afridi’s case has received is from beyond Pakistan’s borders because “there is a lot of popular antipathy towards him, and the state and pro-state voices in the public space have painted him as a traitor,” said Mustafa Qadri, a human rights expert and founder of Equidem Research and Consulting. “This all makes it very difficult for civil society to actively support his case and his family,” who are in hiding, living in fear of public reprisal.
Nevertheless, Nadeem remains undeterred, despite four dozen inconclusive court hearings, and frustration at what he says are deliberate attempts by the state prosecutor to prolong the case by failing to appear for hearings.
The only remaining option that legal experts and officials in the Pakistani government point to is a full pardon from the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province or the President of Pakistan, both of which seem highly unlikely. Nadeem also wants the abolition of the tribal law under which Afridi was charged, and has not given up hope of a deal between the US and Pakistan. “If both the countries come to an agreement, Afridi will be released.”
The lawyer is also offering the media rights to Afridi’s life story, if Hollywood or foreign publishers are interested. “But nothing so far has happened.”


United Nations warily awaits Donald Trump’s return to power

Updated 10 sec ago
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United Nations warily awaits Donald Trump’s return to power

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Concerns at UN about Washington’s budget contributions

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Trump expected to withdraw from climate deal again

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UN has done ‘prudent planning’ ahead of Trump return

GENEVA: The United Nations has been planning for the possible return of Donald Trump and the cuts to US funding and engagement with world body that are likely to come with his second term as president.
There was a sense of “déjà vu and some trepidation” at the 193-member world body, said one senior Asian diplomat, as Republican Trump won Tuesday’s US election over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“There is also some hope that a transactional administration will engage the UN on some areas even if it were to defund some dossiers. After all, what bigger and better global stage is there than the United Nations?” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A US retreat at the UN could open the door for China, which has been building its influence in global diplomacy.
Trump has offered few specifics about foreign policy in his second term but supporters say the force of his personality and his “peace through strength” approach will help bend foreign leaders to his will. He has vowed to solve the war in Ukraine and is expected to give strong support to Israel in its conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
Among the top concerns at the UN are whether the United States will decide to contribute less money to the world body and withdraw from key multinational institutions and agreements, including the world Heath Organization and the Paris climate agreement.
US funding is the immediate worry. Washington is the UN’s largest contributor — with China second — accounting for 22 percent of the core UN budget and 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget.
A country can be up to two years in arrears before facing the possible repercussion of losing its General Assembly vote.

’EXTREMELY HARD’
Trump came to power last time proposing to cut about a third off US diplomacy and aid budgets, which included steep reductions in funding for UN peacekeeping and international organizations. But Congress, which sets the federal US government budget, pushed back on Trump’s proposal.
A UN spokesperson said at the time the proposed cuts would have made it impossible to continue all essential work.
“The UN secretariat has known that they could face a Trump comeback all year. There has been prudent planning behind the scenes on how to manage potential US budget cuts,” said Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group.
“So (UN Secretary-General Antonio) Guterres and his team are not totally unprepared, but they know the next year will be extremely hard,” he said.
Trump’s team did not immediately respond to a query about his policy toward the UN after he takes office in January.
During his first term, Trump complained that the US was shouldering an unfair burden of the cost of the UN and pushed for reforms. Washington is traditionally slow to pay and when Trump left office in 2021 the US was in arrears about $600 million for the core budget and $2 billion for peacekeeping.
According to UN figures, President Joe Biden’s administration currently owes $995 million for the core UN budget and $862 million for the peacekeeping budget.
“I don’t want to pre-empt or speak about policies that may or may not happen, but we work with member states in the way we’ve always worked with member states,” Guterres’ spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Wednesday.
In 2026, the UN Security Council will choose Guterres’ successor, a decision in which the Trump administration will hold a veto power.

’GREAT NEWS FOR CHINA’
During Trump’s first term, he was critical of the United Nations and wary of multilateralism. He announced plans to quit the World Health Organization, and pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN cultural agency UNESCO, a global climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal.
When Biden succeeded him in 2021, he rescinded the US decision to withdraw from the WHO and returned the US to UNESCO and the climate agreement. Trump’s campaign has said he would quit the climate deal again if he won office.
“It will survive. But, of course, it will probably survive severely undermined,” Guterres told Reuters in September of a second withdrawal from the climate pact by Trump.
Ahead of the US election, a senior European diplomat said a Trump win would be “great news for China,” recalling that during Trump’s first term “the Chinese influence in the UN increased a lot because it was an open bar for the Chinese.”
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Trump again cuts UN funding and withdraws from international pacts “it will just give China the opportunity to present itself as the supporter number one of multilateralism.”
US funding for some other UN agencies is also in question. One of the first moves by the Trump administration in 2017 was to cut funding for UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the international body’s agency focused on family planning as well as maternal and child health in more than 150 countries.
Trump’s administration said UNFPA “supports ... a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The UN said that was an inaccurate perception. Biden restored US funding for UNFPA.
If Trump again cuts funding, UNFPA warned that “women will lose lifesaving services in some of the world’s most devastating crises” in places like Afghanistan, Sudan and Ukraine.
Under Trump’s first presidency, the US also opposed long-agreed international language on women’s sexual and reproductive rights and health in UN resolutions over concern that it would advance abortion rights.
A senior African diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up the impending return of Trump for multilateralism and the United Nations: “The heavens help us.”

At least 25 wounded as apartment building hit by Russian missile

Updated 34 sec ago
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At least 25 wounded as apartment building hit by Russian missile

  • 12-story residential building was struck by a bomb that partially destroyed the first and third floors
  • A barrage of drones also struck Odesa and its suburbs in south of the country, wounding at least two people

KYIV: At least 25 people were wounded in an overnight Russian strike on an apartment block in Kharkiv, the mayor of Ukraine’s second city said Friday.
The 12-story residential building was struck by a bomb that partially destroyed the first and third floors, Mayor Igor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.
“The number of injured keeps increasing. As of now, there are 25 of them,” he added.
Rescue efforts were under way for inhabitants trapped on the third floor.
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, accused Russia of “deliberately hitting an apartment block.”
“The Russians are also attacking Kyiv with missiles,” he added.
Separately, Kyiv’s military office said that anti-missile air defenses were operating in the capital.
A barrage of drones also struck Odesa and its suburbs in the south of the country, wounding at least two people, the region’s governor Oleg Kiper said.
Kyiv was targeted on Thursday by another “massive” Russian drone attack that wounded two people, damaged buildings and sparked fires in several districts, Ukrainian authorities said.
Russia has systematically targeted the capital with drone and missile barrages since the first day of its invasion launched nearly three years ago on February 24, 2022.
Ukrainian authorities have been seeking air defense systems from their allies to fend off Russian aerial attacks.


At least 2 dead and 12 missing after a fishing boat sinks off South Korea’s Jeju island

Updated 25 min 24 sec ago
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At least 2 dead and 12 missing after a fishing boat sinks off South Korea’s Jeju island

  • Nearby fishing vessels managed to pull 15 crew members out of the water, but two of them were later pronounced dead
  • 27 crew members were on the 129-tonne boat, which left Jeju’s Seogwipo port late Thursday to catch mackerel

SEOUL: A fishing boat capsized and sank off the coast of South Korea’s Jeju island Friday, leaving at least two people dead and 12 others unaccounted for, coast guard officials said.
Nearby fishing vessels managed to pull 15 crew members out of the water, but two of them were later pronounced dead after being brought to shore. The other 13 did not sustain life-threatening injuries, said Kim Han-na, an official at Jeju’s coast guard.
She said 27 crew members – 16 South Korean nationals and 11 foreigners – were on the 129-tonne boat, which left Jeju’s Seogwipo port late Thursday to catch mackerel. The coast guard received a distress signal at around 4:30 a.m. Friday from a nearby fishing vessel that conducted rescue efforts as the boat sank 24 kilometers northwest of the island.
At least 11 vessels and nine aircraft from South Korea’s coast guard, police, fire service and military were deployed as of Friday morning to search for survivors. They were being assisted by 13 civilian vessels.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called for officials to mobilize all available resources to find and rescue the missing crew members, his office said.


South Korea holds missile drill after North Korea launches

Updated 23 min 11 sec ago
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South Korea holds missile drill after North Korea launches

  • The nuclear-armed North had test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile
  • Hyunmoo surface-to-surface short-range missile was sent into the West Sea in the exercise

SEOUL: South Korea fired a ballistic missile into the sea in a show of force after North Korea’s recent salvo of missile launches, Seoul said Friday.
The nuclear-armed North had test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as well as a number of short-range ballistic missiles in separate drills over the last two weeks.
South Korea’s military command said its live-fire exercise was aimed at demonstrating its “strong resolve to firmly respond to any North Korean provocation.”
It also underlined its “capability and readiness for precision strikes against the enemy’s origin of provocation,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff added.
A Hyunmoo surface-to-surface short-range missile was sent into the West Sea in the exercise, the military command said.
South Korea started domestic production of short-range ballistic missiles in the 1970s to counter the threats posed by North Korea.
Hyunmoo are a series of missiles which are key to the country’s so-called ‘Kill Chain’ preemptive strike system, which allows Seoul to launch a preemptive attack if there are signs of imminent North Korean attack.
In early October, the country displayed for the first time its largest ballistic missile, the Hyunmoo-5, which is capable of destroying underground bunkers.
Last Sunday, South Korea, Japan and the United States conducted a joint air drill involving a US B-1B bomber, South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets, and Japanese F-2 jets, in response to the North’s ICBM launch.
Such joint drills infuriate Pyongyang, which views them as rehearsals for invasion.
Kim Yo Jong, sister of the country’s leader and a key spokesperson, called the US-South Korea-Japan exercises an “action-based explanation of the most hostile and dangerous aggressive nature of the enemy toward our Republic.”
The drill was an “absolute proof of the validity and urgency of the line of building up the nuclear forces we have opted for and put into practice,” she added.


Taiwan coast guard offers rewards for spotting foreign ships

Updated 43 min 16 sec ago
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Taiwan coast guard offers rewards for spotting foreign ships

  • Taiwan’s coast guard said Friday it will reward people who report the presence of foreign military ships, including those from China

TAIPEI: Taiwan’s coast guard said Friday it will reward people who report the presence of foreign military ships, including those from China, in waters around the island, as it seeks the public’s help with monitoring “abnormal” activity.
China regularly deploys fighter jets, navy ships and coast guard vessels around Taiwan to press its claims of sovereignty over the island, which Taipei’s government rejects.
Taiwan is massively outgunned by China, which has refused to renounce the use of force to bring the island under its control.
“The Coast Guard’s manpower is limited but the people power at sea is unlimited,” Taiwan’s coast guard said in a statement announcing the rewards.
The coast guard called on people, including fishers, to “stay vigilant to abnormal maritime activities” to help counter the growing “threats from the sea” and “all kinds of grey zone harassment tactics” — actions that fall short of an act of war.
People who reported homicide, piracy, arson and kidnapping to the coast guard could receive up to NT$200,000 ($6,200), while reports of Chinese “stowaways” would be rewarded with NT$50,000, and NT$10,000 for other foreign stowaways.
Verified reports to the coast guard about foreign and Chinese military ships and other vessels would be rewarded with NT$3,000.
China maintains a near-daily presence of naval vessels and warplanes around the island.
Chinese coast guard ships have also been spotted around Taiwan’s outlying islands, at times briefly entering its restricted waters.
A series of incidents involving boats from both sides have fueled tensions across the narrow waterway separating Taiwan and China.
A Taiwanese court in September sentenced a former Chinese naval captain to eight months in prison for illegally entering the island by boat.