RAWALPINDI: Dr Shakeel Afridi, who was imprisoned for his alleged links to a banned militant group, was shifted to the high-security Adiala jail here on Friday.

Dr Afridi was jailed after being convicted in the treason case and was kept in the Peshawar jail.

According to sources, the high-profile prisoner was airlifted by a helicopter from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa amid tight security and taken to the Adiala jail.

However, it is not known whether Dr Afridi would be kept in the Adiala jail or shifted to some other place.

Dr Afridi had been taken into custody soon after the killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden by US commandos in Abbottabad in May 2011.

He was accused of helping the CIA track down the Al Qaeda leader in Abbottabad. However, he was never tried on the charges of helping the CIA track down Osama.

It emerged in May 2012 that the doctor had been tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulation and sentenced to 33 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 10 years by the FCR commissioner.

Manzoor Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2018