High-profile inmate: K-P says Dr Afridi may be whisked away or killed

Asks federal govt to shift him to Attock Jail, to Punjab or to any other prisons held by the armed forces

ISLAMABAD: Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa (K-P) government fears that the powers supporting Dr Shakeel Afridi –  who allegedly ran a fake vaccination campaign at the behest of the CIA to track down Osama Bin Laden – may try to rescue or kill him through a ‘covert or overt operation’. 

Quoting intelligence reports, the K-P government has informed the federal government that there is a severe danger surrounding Dr Afridi, who is currently facing imprisonment under Frontier Crimes Regulation and is confined in the Central Prison Peshawar.

“Focus of all the international media and superpowers is on him [Afridi] due to his suspicious role in Osama operation –plans to either kill him by his adversaries or his supporters [or] to rescue him through overt or covert operations have been hatched,” reads a letter by the K-P’s home department.

This letter – also available with The Express Tribune – is written to the K-P chief minister, inspector general of police, ministries of defence, interior, states and frontier region and chief secretary of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

The letter requests the federal government that considering the gravity of the situation Dr Afridi should either be shifted to Attock Jail, to Punjab or to any other prisons held by Pakistan Army and other forces. It claims that militants have planned to carry out a vehicles-borne explosive attack on this prison.

“His [Afridi] further presence in the K-P prison has not only endangered other prisoners’ and staffs’ lives but also put at risk the adjoining police lines, session courts and civil secretariat,” the letter says, adding:  “His further confinement in any prison cell of the K-P may be catastrophic.”

The provincial government further argued that Dr Afridi has been sentenced in offences occurred in Fata as such his confinement is the responsibility of the ministry of Safron.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Ijaz Mohmand, a key member of Afridi’s legal team, agreed that his client’s life is in danger. “We also have fear of such covert or overt operation—Americans may be supporting some elements within us,” he said. Afridi must be shifted to a safe place. It is the only way to avert such looming threats to his life, he added.

Former interior secretary Tasneem Noorani also termed the K-P government request reasonable. He said such attempt is possible in a ‘jailbreak’ methodology. He said ‘Afridi’s supporters’ might be the people, who are generally believed to be working for the US in this area. “Militants can also target him as he is accused of supporting the CIA to track down Osama bin Laden,” Noorani added.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2014.