ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broad­casting Fawad Chau­dhry has said that the government is determined to bring Aafia Siddiqui back from the United States as she is a citizen of Pakistan.

Talking to a private TV channel on Friday, the minister said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had issued directives to the Foreign Office to talk to American authorities for Aafia’s release from the US prison.

Dr Aafia was sentenced to 86 years in prison in 2010 on charges related to terrorism and links with Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, a senior interior ministry official told Dawn that the government could be looking for a swap between Dr Aafia and Dr Shakeel Afridi as his release had been requested by the US government several times. Dr Shakeel Afridi was recently shifted from Adiala jail in Rawalpindi to Sahiwal jail. He was accused of helping the CIA track down Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad. He was tried and convicted in a treason case in May 2012 under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and sentenced to 33 years in prison, which was later reduced to 10 years by the FCR commissioner.

However, senior analyst Zahid Hussain disputed the swap claim.

“Such claims can be made easily but there has to be legal considerations too,” Mr Hussain said, adding that there could not be any swap as there was no such agreement between Pakistan and the US. “Besides, legally speaking, she is a US national and was tried there, whereas Dr Afridi is a Pakistani national and tried here,” he said.

“There is no law in the US to release a convicted prisoner except that the US president pardons her — but this would be a very remote possibility,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2018