ISLAMABAD - Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan says the fate of Shakeel Afridi is going to be decided by Pakistani courts, and not by any US presidential candidate.
The interior minister was reacting to the recent interview given by Donald Trump to Fox News, in which he had said that if elected, he will free the Pakistani doctor who is in jail now for helping the US raid Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad in 2011.
The minister said that Shakeel Afridi is a Pakistani citizen and nobody else has the right to dictate to us about his future.
The interior minister asserted it was not only about Afridi but Trump’s perception and comments about Pakistan in the interview were highly misplaced and unwarranted. Nisar said that contrary to Trump’s misconception, Pakistan is not a colony of the United States. “He should learn to treat sovereign countries with respect,” the minister added.
He said Donald Trump also seems to be ignorant historically of the huge scarifies Pakistan and its people have made, while standing with or supporting US policies over the years.
During the interview when Trump was asked that how he would free Dr Afridi, the US presidential front-runner had said: “I would tell them let him out and I’m sure they would let him out.”
The US Congress, which last week withdrew funds for an F-16 deal to force Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network, is now considering another cut, this time to persuade Islamabad to release Dr Shakil Afridi.
A court of tribal areas of the country in 2012 had sentenced Dr Shakeel Afridi to 33 years in prison for his involvement in anti-state activities. He is accused of assisting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in obtaining DNA samples of Osama Bin Laden through a fake vaccination campaign. He is presently spending his sentence in jail. US Navy seals had killed Bin Laden in a covert operation in Abbottabad in 2011. The doctor, revered as a hero in the US, is serving a 33-year-long punishment in jail for treason.
In January 2014, President Barack Obama signed a bill that proposed to withhold $33 million from assistance to Pakistan over Dr Afridi’s detention.
In May that year, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed another measure linking the provision of military aid to Pakistan to Dr Afridi’s release. Since then, lawmakers have been raising this issue in Congress every time a budget proposal for Pakistan is discussed.
Trump had also said he planned to leverage US aid, “because we give a lot of aid to Pakistan. We give a lot of money to Pakistan.”
According to the interior minister, the ‘peanuts’ the US had given in return should not be used to threaten or browbeat Pakistan into following Trump’s misguided vision of foreign policy.
Nisar said Pakistan is a country, which had suffered much and the cost it had to pay in supporting US over the years had been mind-boggling. On Saturday, Senate chairperson Mian Raza Rabbani also lashed out at Trump for his remarks, saying Pakistan is a sovereign country and will not succumb to dictations.