Exclusive: As Shakil Afridi Languishes Behind Bars, Abandoned Since Aiding U.S. in Finding Osama bin Laden, His Son Speaks Out

Shakil Afridi, who once was celebrated by America for his role in tracking down Osama bin Laden, has spent almost 14 years in solitary confinement in Pakistani prisons. Confined to a cell smaller than his own 6-foot frame, with no ventilation and no working toilet, his existence has been reduced to a slow, agonizing descent into obscurity.While Washington moves on to new wars and shifting priorities, Dr. Afridi seems a forgotten casualty of history. “When my dad was taken, he was a strong, healthy man. Now, he’s in his 60s, but he looks like he’s in his 70s due to the harsh conditions,” Dr. Afridi’s eldest son, Zaiyam Khan, now in his late 20s, tells The New York Sun in an exclusive interview. “He’s weak, he’s lost weight, and the psychological toll has been immense. He used to be hopeful, but now he’s losing faith that anything will change. It’s breaking him,” Mr. Khan added.Dr. Afridi was initially held in Central Jail Peshawar. In 2019, he was transferred to the remote, notoriously harsh high-security facility at Sahiwal, Punjab. “We try to see him every two weeks. But it’s difficult for us to visit him — we have to drive eight hours each way. It feels intentional like they [Pakistani authorities] are trying to make it as hard as possible for us to see him,” Mr. Khan continued. “The prison is in one of the hottest places in Pakistan, with poor ventilation and terrible conditions. He’s being mistreated.”Bragging Led to Failure In 2011, Dr. Afridi, a well-respected surgeon from Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, was recruited by United States intelligence to assist in confirming the location of Osama bin Laden’s hideout at Abbottabad. Using a hepatitis B vaccination campaign as a disguise, Dr. Afridi collected DNA samples from residents of a fortified compound where bin Laden was believed to be hiding. These samples provided the critical confirmation that led to the successful United States Navy SEAL raid on May 2, 2011, which resulted in bin Laden’s death. His former attorney, Qamar Nadeem, said that Dr. Afridi was not aware of the entity he was working for, the nature of the mission, or the target involved. A source familiar with the situation tells the Sun that United States intelligence officials had offered Dr. Afridi the chance to exit the country beforehand, though he declined, unwilling to leave behind his extended family. At the time, he did not anticipate the operation’s details would be exposed.What was a victory for Washington turned into a nightmare for Dr. Afridi. Within days, Dr. Afridi’s cover was blown after the CIA director at the time, Leon Panetta, disclosed that a doctor had provided “very helpful” intelligence. Pakistani authorities quickly connected the dots and identified Dr. Afridi as the one behind the operation, using forensic evidence to pin him down. He was arrested on May 23, 2011, and has not been seen in public since. Mr. Khan stresses that his father’s health is failing. “Medical care is almost nonexistent. Last year, for example, he had rashes on his thighs in the summer. Something as simple as ointment would have helped, but they refused to provide any treatment,” he said. “My dad had to suffer through it for months until the cooler weather arrived, and the rashes finally healed on their own. If something serious happens, I don’t know what would become of him.”Worse, Mr. Khan notes, is the psychological toll. “My dad is being kept in solitary under the justification that he’s a ‘high-profile prisoner.’ It’s inhumane. Humans need interaction, even prisoners,” he continued. “When we visit, we only get 30 minutes with him. He talks nonstop about random things—trees, plants, anything—because he wants someone to listen. It’s heartbreaking.”Family Paying the Price The family, too, is left to suffer with little help or recourse. Dr. Afridi’s imprisonment has devastated his three children and wife, Imrana Ghafoor, who live in constant fear. “In the early days, we were told to leave Peshawar. We got anonymous calls warning us to leave immediately. Agencies, or whoever they were, started looking into our family,” Mr. Khan said. “We had to relocate and were advised to keep a low profile — to avoid making new connections. I’ve had to build my entire life on lies to stay safe. I can’t even tell my neighbors who my father is.”When everything went down, Mr. Khan was a ninth-grader in boarding school and determined to join the Pakistani military. His hopes and dreams quickly fell apart. “I recently had a good job offer from a company in Pakistan. But during the background check, they found out I was Dr. Afridi’s son, and I was fired,” Mr. Khan, who has a degree in marketing and lives with his mother, lamented. “It’s a pattern. Every time I apply for a job, they ask for my father’s identity. In some cases, I’ve had to lie and say he’s abroad. But then they ask for proof, like an overseas Pakistani card, and I can’t provide it.”A dejected Mr. Khan explained that his mother’s health is also declining as she battles with hypertension and immense stress. “We’ve taken her to doctors and even a psychologist, but they all say she just needs to relieve stress. But how can she? She can’t talk to anyone about it without putting us at risk,” he noted. “My family, including my younger brother and sister, have all been on Pakistan’s blacklist since 2011, labeled as conspirators against the state. Imagine putting a ninth grader on an exit control list. It’s absurd. Anyone associated with my father faces threats.”If it weren’t for moral and financial support from his grandfather, Mr. Khan says, the family would not have made it through. “No one wanted to be associated with us because law enforcement agencies were constantly watching us. People feared even contacting us,” he explained. “But my grandfather never abandoned us.” Exploiting Legal LoopholesIslamabad has gone to great lengths to deny Dr. Afridi due process. In 2012, he was sentenced to 33 years behind bars. His sentence was reduced to 23 years in 2014 after a court dropped some of the charges, including “waging war against Pakistan.”While the prevailing belief is that Dr. Afridi was imprisoned for treason, his conviction is for the dubious charge of having ties to a now-defunct militant group, Lashkar-e-Islam. His family and legal representatives have strongly refuted this as bogus, calling it a legal smokescreen to justify his indefinite detention.In Pakistan, cases of treason are typically handled by a special court. This would have brought about much more public scrutiny. Instead, Dr. Afridi’s case was handed to the closed and widely considered “kangaroo court” run by tribal elders and established under British-era Frontier Crimes Regulations, which governed the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In 2018, Islamabad abolished this court system, sending Dr. Afridi’s case deeper into legal limbo with a new tribunal taking over. Yet since his conviction years ago, Dr. Afridi’s legal battle has been riddled with roadblocks. Appeals filed in the Peshawar high court have been met with endless delays, hearings postponed without explanation, and prosecutors repeatedly failing to appear. In 2015, Dr. Afridi’s high-profile attorney was shot dead. His relative and attorney, Qamar Nadeem, who then took up the case, has since left the country. Mr. Khan said his father is now represented by a junior attorney from their village, pointing out that the hearings are merely “a formality” in which “nothing ever happens.”In Pakistan, Dr. Afridi is widely regarded as a traitor. Many believe his collaboration with a foreign intelligence agency humiliated the nation, exposing Pakistan’s failure to detect — or possibly its complicity in — bin Laden’s presence within its borders. Beyond Dr. Afridi’s tragedy, the CIA’s use of a vaccination campaign as a cover for intelligence-gathering has had devastating consequences for public health in Pakistan. The exposure of the operation fueled widespread distrust of immunization efforts, leading to a sharp decline in vaccinations. Some local leaders warned parents against allowing their children to receive routine shots, while others outright banned vaccination teams due to a conspiracy theory that they were CIA operatives.The fallout has been deadly. Dozens of polio workers have been killed in militant attacks, and Pakistan remains one of only three countries where polio persists. Washington’s Unsuccessful Efforts Despite public condemnation by the United States government of his imprisonment, diplomatic efforts to secure his release failed, as Pakistan refuses to budge. American lawmakers have introduced various legislative measures over the years, including bills for his naturalization as an American citizen, withholding aid to Pakistan, and awarding him a Congressional Gold Medal. None of these have resulted in his release. For more than a decade, the United States Department of State repeatedly described Dr. Afridi’s imprisonment as unjust, raising the issue in high-level talks with Pakistan. In 2012, the Senate voted to withhold $33 million in aid, corresponding to the years the important American asset was sentenced to jail. In 2018, President Trump further intensified pressure by halting security assistance to Pakistan, citing the $33 billion in aid the United States had provided to the country. Washington did provide some $350 million in aid that year, a sharp decrease from the $1.6 billion allocated in 2015. Mr. Trump also pledged during his 2016 campaign to work toward Dr. Afridi’s release, but tangible progress has yet to materialize.A proposal to exchange Dr. Afridi for a Pakistani neurosurgeon arrested in Afghanistan after being accused of trying to kill United States military personnel and currently in a Texas federal prison, Aafia Siddiqui, has been floated by lawyers and officials since 2017. It, too, has amounted to nothing. Many in the intelligence community highlight the importance of not forgetting Dr. Afridi’s plight.“While there certainly are some still around who were involved in the Osama bin Laden effort who want to secure his release, many have retired or moved on,” a former intelligence officer serving with the CIA, Del Wilber, tells the Sun. “With the passage of time, he becomes more and more forgotten.”Mr. Wilber stresses that “allowing someone who performed valuable service to our intelligence activities rot in a Pakistani prison certainly isn’t a selling point to get someone else to cooperate with us in the future.”“With John Ratcliffe as director of central intelligence, efforts to secure Dr. Afridi’s release might resume,” he continued. “Ratcliffe understands the importance of ‘leaving no one behind,’ at least I hope.”The White House and State Department did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment. For Mr. Khan, speaking out while keeping his cover is all he can do as he holds on to the threads of hope. “For years, I avoided the media out of fear. My mother also didn’t want us to speak out. But we have had enough,” he added. “Trump is back in office, and we have our fingers crossed again, but nothing has changed yet.”

Exclusive: As Shakil Afridi Languishes Behind Bars, Abandoned Since Aiding U.S. in Finding Osama bin Laden, His Son Speaks Out

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