ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Monday that the fate of an imprisoned doctor who allegedly helped the United States raid Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad in 2011 would be decided by courts and the government and not by Republican leader Donald Trump even if he became the US president.

“Shakeel Afridi is a Pakistani citizen and nobody else has the right to dictate to us about his future”, the minister said in a statement.

This was the first reaction from a government functionary to remarks made by US presidential contender Trump about freeing the doctor who is in jail.

Chaudhry Nisar said Mr Trump’s perception and comments about Pakistan in his interview were highly misplaced and unwarranted.

Contrary to Mr Trump’s misconception, Pakistan was not a colony of the US and he should learn to treat sovereign countries with respect, the minister said.

He said Mr Trump also appeared to be ignorant, historically, of the huge scarifies Pakistan and its people had made while standing with or supporting US policies over the years.

“The peanuts that the US has given us in return should not be used to threaten or browbeat us into following Mr Trump’s misguided vision of foreign policy.”

He said Pakistan had suffered much and the cost it had to pay in supporting the US over the years has been mindboggling. He said Mr Trump’s statement only served to show not only his insensitivity but also his ignorance about Pakistan.

“I think I would get him out in two minutes,” Mr Trump had said during a Fox News interview on Thursday, when asked if he would free Dr Afridi. “I would tell them to let him out and I’m sure they would let him out.”

Indicating that he plans to leverage US aid, he said: “We give a lot of aid to Pakistan. We give a lot of money to Pakistan.”

Dr Afridi had helped the Central Intelligence Agency by running a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad a month before US forces raided a compound in Abbottabad and killed Osama. The US Defence Secretary at the time, Leon Panetta, confirmed that he had worked for United States intelligence by collecting DNA to verify Osama’s presence.

Dr Afridi was picked up by Pakistani intelligence agents near Peshawar, two weeks after the raid.

He was sentenced on May 23, 2012, to 33 years in prison and fined Rs320,000 on charges of colluding with the banned militant group Lashkar-i-Islam (LI) and its chief Mangal Bagh.

However, a court in the tribal area did not entertain evidence relating to his involvement with the CIA, citing lack of jurisdiction.

A judicial official overturned the sentence in 2013 and ordered re-trial. “The assistant political agent played the role of a magistrate for which he was not authorised,” the judgement of the Frontier Crimes Regulations Commissioner said.

In his appeal filed on June 1, 2012, Dr Afridi denied any association with the LI and claimed that he had been kidnapped by the group in 2008 and ordered to pay Rs1 million. The court had said that the doctor had paid Rs2m to the group and helped provide medical assistance to militants in the Khyber tribal region.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd , 2016