ISI foils CIA attempt to break out Shakil Afridi from Peshawar jail: reports

Monitoring Desk

ISLAMABAD: The Russian News Agency Sputnik claimed that US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) failed to conduct an operation to break a Peshawar prison for Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi who had assisted the US spy agency in tracking down the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Russian news agency quoted a source familiar to the matter that US authorities had earlier requested Islamabad to shift Dr Shakil Afridi to United States.

Dr Shakil Afridi was sentenced to 33 year by a tribal court in 2012 after his arrest in 2011 for his alleged involvement in anti-state activities.

According to the reports, Shakil Afridi was recently shifted from Peshawar to unknown place due to security concerns and a planned prison break.

The US spying agency CIA refused to comment on the news that Pakistan’s ISI thwarted the agency’s plan to break the prison for Afridi.

Meanwhile, official of US Department of State official told Sputnik that Washington hopes that the Pakistani authorities will take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of Shakeel Afridi and he admitted that the issue of Afridi’s release is reportedly one of the major hurdles to the improvement of ties between the US and Pakistan.

Soon after the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 in a US raid in Abbottabad, the US media reported that Afridi had contributed to the success of the CIA operation by collecting DNA samples of bin Laden’s family by order of the intelligence agency.

Then-CIA director Leon Panetta and then-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had confirmed the doctor’s role in eliminating the terrorist, after which Afridi was arrested by Pakistani authorities.