ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden faced accusations of corruption and other wrongdoing long before he was captured by Pakistani intelligence agents and then jailed for 33 years for treason.

According to a 2002 Pakistan health department document seen by Reuters, Afridi was deemed to be corrupt and unreliable and unfit for government service.

US officials have hailed Afridi, aged in his 40s, as a hero for helping pinpoint bin Laden's location in the town of Abbottabad where the al Qaeda leader was killed.

The senior leadership of Pakistan including Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani are of the view that Dr Afridi should be given the right to defend himself in higher courts and is entitled to get justice through normal courts.

However, the fresh accusations about Afridi's character, coupled with his imprisonment, will almost certainly lead to further strain on already tense bilateral ties.

Pakistani officials' attempts to cast doubt on Afridi's character will likely be viewed in some quarters as retaliation for his work with the Americans, despite the disclosures in the 2002 Pakistani document.

US officials on Monday called the accusations character assassination. In Washington, one senior official said the US government was unaware of any questionable behaviour by Afridi.

“Available information showed Afridi was a respected member of the Pakistani health care community,” said the senior official.

“We are aware of efforts, put in place since Dr Afridi's arrest, to denigrate his character.”

Another US official said: “It's nothing short of puzzling that Pakistani officials would disparage someone who helped in the hunt for bin Laden, a terrorist who had Pakistani blood on his hands.”

Afridi family's lawyer declined to be drawn in on the controversy.

“I cannot comment on any past allegations against him,” Raza Safi told Reuters.

Afridi ran a vaccination campaign in Abbottabad and used cheek swabs to try to gather DNA from bin Laden's children, said one former Pakistani security official familiar with the case.

Accompanied by three health workers, he went to bin Laden's house and told his wives that a vaccination programme was underway in the area, said the former security official.

“A woman went in (to the house) and said 'bring the children out, the doctor is waiting and he will give them the drops',” the former official said.

“That's when he used the swabs.”

It was unclear whether the CIA used the swabs to determine if the children were bin Laden's. A DNA test can prove close blood relations and US authorities could have matched the samples with profiles it had collected from several of bin Laden's relatives.

Moreover, United States cut its aid to Pakistan by $33 million which is symbolic to Dr Afridi's 33 years in imprisonment.

Inadvertently confirmed

In Washington, another senior US official with knowledge of Afridi's work for the CIA said the doctor's vaccination efforts had also enabled him to gather intelligence on bin Laden's couriers who visited the house.

“Dr Afridi was inadvertently able to confirm something we already suspected — that bin Laden's couriers practised extraordinary operational security,” the official said.

“Was that a key to the raid? No. Was it important? Absolutely.”

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that Afridi “was not working against Pakistan. He was working against al Qaeda. And I hope that ultimately Pakistan understands that”.

“Because what they have done here, I think, you know, does not help in the effort to try to re-establish a relationship between the United States and Pakistan.”

US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher introduced legislation in February calling for Afridi to be granted US citizenship and said it was “shameful and unforgivable that our supposed allies” charged him.

Unwanted scrutiny

Infuriated by the unilateral US raid in a town just a two-hour drive from the capital Islamabad, many in the country see Afridi as a villain who conspired against the state and brought unwanted scrutiny of Pakistan's attitude to militants.

Last week, a tribal court sentenced him to 33 years in prison for working with a foreign intelligence agency.

Afridi is being kept in solitary confinement in a prison in the city of Peshawar for fear that he may be targeted by militants also incarcerated there, said prison sources.

Afridi had been working with the CIA for years before the bin Laden raid, providing intelligence on militant groups in Pakistan's unruly tribal region, alleges the former Pakistani security official and intelligence official.

Some Pakistani officials are of the view that he was of questionable character.

However it is strange that while the former security official alleges that Afridi was in contact with militant groups and treated Taliban fighters who were wounded in battle with the Pakistani military. The puzzling question is how can Afridi be close to the militants while being a CIA operative at the same time.

Character mystery and the security threats

A senior health official said that he saw a record of the case in which a nurse had lodged a complaint against Dr Afridi about sexual harassment to the regional health director. That account was confirmed by a senior police official who investigated Afridi.

"A number of nurses had complained about him, that he had behaved inappropriately with them," said the police official.

However, these accounts could not be independently verified.

Afridi's brother Jamil described the treason charges as baseless and said the doctor was being made a scapegoat.

"If my brother had done something wrong, he had a valid US visa. He could have fled the country," he said, adding that the family had received no offers of help from the US government.

"I am in hiding because my life is in danger, all of our lives are in danger," Jamil Afridi added.

"The family is safe for now but the propaganda campaign in the media is putting us in a lot of danger."

Some health workers who knew Afridi described him as a dedicated, polite professional.

"He was very nice to all the people in the team and did his job very diligently," said Naseem Bibi, a nurse.

She said she had been with him when the medical team visited bin Laden's house.

"Yes, he was very interested in this house on that day, but I wasn't sure why," she said.

Easy prey

According to the former security official, with Dr Afridi’s reputation hurt by allegations, he was an easy prey for the CIA which found him through his connections to Western aid agencies in about 2009.

"The man was living beyond his means after he was fired," said the former security official.

"He got married a third time. He maintained a couple of cars."

Afridi, who came to Abbottabad to carry out the vaccination campaign apparently at the CIA's behest, blundered when he visited the district health officer in the town.

He told the officer he was a volunteer who wanted to provide vaccinations in a certain area and he gave the officer his real name, the former security official said.

The team moved from house to house conducting vaccinations and leaving chalk marks on the door to show the people inside had been vaccinated, as is customary in Pakistan.

"They went in systematically the way a team is supposed to work," said the official.

"No eyebrows were raised."

But after bin Laden was killed, his widows unwittingly helped Pakistani authorities track Afridi.

"They said that the only time when somebody from outside visited the house, was this polio vaccination (team)," said the former security official, who believed the only other visitor to the house was bin Laden's courier, about once a month.

Afridi was quickly scooped up by security officials.

When interrogated, Afridi initially said he had no ties with Americans, said the former security official.

"He categorically denied everything to start with," said the former security official. "But when the Americans started asking for him, then I think the cat was out of the bag."

Delving into the statements and details published by various Pakistani officials, the most apparent question remains that how could Government of Pakistan continued to utilise Dr Afridi’s services in the tribal area, if his ethics and character were highly questionable?

It is also important to understand that Dr Afridi worked in one of the most dangerous quarters of the country where even a rumour of remote allegiance with CIA can result in violent reprisals from the militants. The question is if he was such a high-profile spy, working in collaboration with the CIA, how did he manage to operate in the area without coming into Taliban’s notice and survived for that long?

What happened to medical ethics?

But most important question, which requires much attention and mulling is that between this war of words and actions, that has been continuously raging between United States and Pakistan, are not the medical ethics and principles being overlooked and neglected the most?

The region where doctors and medical care is almost nonexistent because of the political and security situation and a lot of prejudices about the vaccinations being a Western tool to harm Muslim children, wouldn’t this hullabaloo further deter the doctors to render their services in the region? — A worth pondering point which unfortunately is being ignored by Pakistanis and Americans both.