By IANS,
London: US spy agency CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the Pakistani town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in a bid to obtain DNA from the Al Qaeda leader’s family, the Guardian reported.
The CIA recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad. It started the project in a “poorer” part of the town to make it look “more authentic”, Pakistani and US officials said.
Bin Laden was killed by US special forces May 2.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, was later arrested by Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for working with the CIA.
The US is concerned about the doctor’s safety, and reportedly intervened on his behalf, the daily said.
The fake vaccination was planned after CIA officers tracked an Al Qaeda courier named Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last year.
The CIA monitored the compound by satellite and from a house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that bin Laden was there before mounting an operation.
They thought DNA from any of bin Laden’s children in the compound could be compared to a sample from his sister – who died in Boston in 2010 – to provide evidence that the family was indeed present there.
Hence, CIA agents approached Afridi, the health official in charge of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Afridi went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. He paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the programme without knowing about the connection to bin Laden.
Health officials of the area were among the few people who had access to the bin Laden compound in the past when they had gone to administer polio drops.
Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad.
In March, health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher.
The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first.
In April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, Afridi returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where bin Laden lived.
The Guardian said it was not known exactly how he hoped to get the DNA, although the “nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug”.
A nurse named Mukhtar Bibi managed to gain entry to the bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines.
Sources said the doctor waited outside and told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device.
It was not clear whether the CIA managed to obtain any bin Laden DNA, although one source told the daily the operation did not succeed.
Mukhtar Bibi was reportedly unaware of the real purpose of the vaccination campaign.
The ISI became aware of the doctor’s activities during the investigation into the US raid in which bin Laden was killed.
The CIA has refused to comment on the vaccination plot.