By IANS,
Washington : The US State Department says it is still awaiting a clarification from Pakistan on Shakeel Afridi, the doctor held by Islamabad for helping the CIA track down slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
“We’ve not received any updates. And our position’s very clear,”
Geo News quoted US State Department spokesman Mark Toner as saying.
He said the US didn’t think there were ever any grounds for Pakistan to hold Afridi, much less convict him of any wrongdoing.
Toner said: “There was this weird reversal last week on which they said, in fact, he was tried – and again, I’m going just off of news reports – because of his ties to the Pakistani Taliban.”
“And we’ve yet to receive from the government, to my understanding or to my knowledge, a clear explanation of that shift.”
Afridi had allegedly helped conduct a phony polio vaccination campaign at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to secure the DNA of bin Laden and his family.
Osama was killed in a operation by US special forces at his mansion in Abbottabad near Islamabad last May.
Afridi was arrested at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham while allegedly trying to flee the country.