Pak doctor who helped US track, kill Laden shifted out of Peshawar jail

Shakil Afridi, a doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency in tracking down Osama Bin Laden and serving a jail term, has been shifted to an unknown location from the central jail due to security reasons, a senior official said on Saturday.

Afridi had ran a fake vaccination drive in Abbottabad city to help CIA agents track the former Al Qaeda chief, who was later killed by US Navy Seals in a controversial raid on May 2, 2011.

A year later, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison by a court for being involved in anti-state activities.

A senior prison official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, who did not want to identified, confirmed that Afridi was shifted from the Peshawar jail but said he was unaware about his new location.

The KP government had earlier informed the federal government about threat to Afridi’s life in the Peshawar prison, where terrorists of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had also been kept.

According to a media report, the doctor had been shifted to Adiala Jail in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.