[Bangla Daily Star] The gunnies accused in a Pakistain court of conspiring with a doctor recruited by the CIA to find the late Osama bin Laden... who went titzup one dark and stormy night...
said yesterday they had nothing to do with him and threatened to kill him.
Shakeel Afridi was on May 24 sentenced to 33 years in jail after he was found guilty of treason under Pakistain's archaic system of tribal justice.
He was incarcerated
Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw!
after US troops killed bin Laden in May 2011 in the town of Abbottabad
... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden....
where he set up a fake vaccination programme in the hope of obtaining DNA samples to confirm the al-Qaeda leader's presence.
But he was convicted for treason over alleged ties to Lashkar-e-Islam and not for working for the CIA, for which the court said it did not have jurisdiction.
Lashkar-e-Islam, led by warlord Mangal Bagh
...a former bus driver, now head of the Deobandi bandido group Lashkar-e-Islam and the Terror of Khyber Agency
..., is a beturbanned goon organization feared for kidnappings and extortion in the tribal district of Khyber, where Afridi worked for years as a doctor.
The court said Afridi had "close links" to the group, saying the doctor's "love" for Bagh and "association with him was an open secret".
But a front man and a commander in the organization both told AFP that they had nothing to do with Afridi.
"We have no link to such a shameless man. If we see him we'll chew him alive," the commander said on condition of anonymity.
Afridi's sentencing has exacerbated tensions in Pakistain's problematic relationship with the United States, where the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to cut aid to Pakistain by a symbolic $33 million.