Doctor helping OBL operation sacked

Pakistan

Doctor helping OBL operation sacked

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Pakistan sacked on Thursday a government surgeon recruited by the CIA to help find Osama bin Laden.

29 March,2012 06:02 pm

According to officials, Doctor Shakeel Afridi, who is in custody, was fired on disciplinary grounds by the government in northwest province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where bin Laden was killed during a clandestine US raid last May.The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has issued a notification of dismissal of Dr Shakeel Afridi, provincial health secretary Ashfaq Khan told AFP.Seventeen other medics who worked on the same fake vaccination programme set up by the CIA in a bid to confirm the Al-Qaeda chief was living in the city of Abbottabad have already been sacked from their government posts, he added.Fifteen women health workers were dismissed last August, and a woman doctor and an assistant coordinator were sacked on March 17, Khan told AFP.Afridi, who worked for years as a government surgeon in the tribal district of Khyber, is in police custody and a panel investigating the bin Laden raid has recommended that he be put on trial for treason.Pakistani officials believe Afridi may have known about bin Ladens presence in Abbottabad and shared the information with US intelligence agents.In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed Afridi had worked for US intelligence by collecting DNA to verify the 9/11 masterminds presence, and expressed concern about Pakistans treatment of him.