PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Taliban on Thursday called for the death of the jailed Pakistani doctor who helped the US find Osama bin Laden, vowing to “cut him into pieces when and where we manage to reach him.”
Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP that Dr. Shakil Afridi was at the top of the terrorist organization’s kill list, vowing, “We will cut him into pieces when and where we manage to reach him.”
“This court judgment and punishment is all a drama, staged to hand him over to America,” Ehsan added.
Earlier Thursday, a Pakistani militant group accused of having links to Afridi denied associating with him and said they would “chew him alive” if they found him.
A commander from the Lashkar e Islam militant group said on condition of anonymity that, “We have no link to such a shameless man. If we see him we’ll chew him alive.”
His denial came after details of the May 24 verdict in Afridi’s case were revealed Wednesday.
The verdict claimed that Afridi was jailed for 33 years in Pakistan because of his links to Lashkar e Islam, not for his role in helping the CIA track down the former terror leader.
The verdict claimed that Afridi was close to the group’s leader Mangal Bagh, adding that his “association with him [Bagh] was an open secret.”
Evidence that Afridi cooperated with “foreign intelligence agencies” was not taken into account during Afridi’s trial because of a “lack of jurisdiction,” the verdict said.
It also found that Afridi supported Lashkar e Islam by providing medical assistance to militant leaders and by providing money to the group.
The unnamed commander acknowledged that Afridi paid Lashkar e Islam two million rupees ($21,000), but said the money was a fine imposed for over-charging patients.
“Afridi and his fellow doctor were fleecing tribesmen, giving them fake medicines and doing fake surgeries. We had a lot of complaints against them and imposed a fine of two million rupees on them,” the commander said.
Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison in Peshawar after he was found guilty of treason last week. The ruling was made under the tribal justice system of Khyber district, part of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt.
He was also fined $3,500.
Afridi ran the fake vaccination program close to bin Laden’s Abbottabad home in an attempt to collect DNA from the former terror leader’s family. The al Qaeda leader was shot dead in a successful US raid in May 2011.