US cuts $33 million in aid to Pakistan over Osama bin Laden doctor sentence

      The US is to cut $33 million from the aid it sends Pakistan over the jailing of the doctor who helped the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden, in a fresh blow to the battered relations between the two states.

      Congressmen on the powerful Senate appropriations committee voted to cut $1 million from the $800 million annual budget for each of the 33 years that Dr Shakeel Afridi has been told he must serve in jail for working with a foreign intelligence agency. Dr Afridi set up a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad in an attempt to obtain blood samples from bin Laden's family, as the CIA tried to confirm the al-Qaeda chief's presence in a nearby villa. Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina who helped push through the measure, said: "We don't need a Pakistan that is just double dealing." Senators including John McCain, the former Republican presidential nominee, have described Dr Afridi as "courageous, heroic, and patriotic," and demanded that he be pardoned. Their intervention came as a retired Pakistani army officer familiar with the case told The Daily Telegraph that Dr Afridi had told his interrogators that his handlers never disclosed their target's identity. Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier who has been given access to interrogation transcripts, said yesterday that Dr Afridi was initially asked to work in two neighbourhoods.

      However, after being ordered to focus his efforts on one house in the days before the May 2 raid to kill bin Laden, he asked his CIA handler "Peter", via satellite phone, for a payment of $10,000. "He knew they were looking for someone. When the search homed in on one house he asked for more money, which he was paid," said Brigadier Qadir. "So he knew it was someone important and he may have had suspicions but he was never told it was bin Laden." Dr Afridi is expected to appeal against his sentence, which was handed down under Pakistan's tribal justice system, a hangover from British colonial rule. The handling of the case has been criticised by the US, where many suspect that at best Pakistan has dragged its feet over seeking out foreign militants and at worst has protected al-Qaeda figures. Dr Afridi is being held in solitary confinement at Peshawar Central Prison, in north-west Pakistan. Officials said he was "weak and depressed", and was given medicine for a stomach complaint by doctors.
      Samad Khan, a prison official, said: "He has been kept away from other prisoners to avert any danger to his life." Dr Afridi's wife and three children have disappeared from their home in the Khyber tribal area and are believed to be in hiding. Congressman Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Obama administration had doomed Dr Afridi by leaking details of the vaccination ruse to the media. "They put him out there," said Mr King. "I'm focused on that they disclosed his identity." The countries also remain at loggerheads over allowing Nato supply convoys to use Pakistani roads to reach Afghanistan. Pakistan has blocked passage since a US air strike killed 24 of its soldiers in November. A Pakistani government spokesman yesterday insisted that the US should respect the conviction because "it was in accordance with Pakistani laws and by the Pakistani courts".