Pakistani doctor jailed for CIA links A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the US capture Osama bin Laden has been convicted of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a move likely to further strain the tense relations between Washington and Islamabad. Shakil Afridi was convicted of running a fake vaccination campaign that helped verify where bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, officials said. "The law has taken its course...Doctor Shakil Afridi has been sentenced for his crime," a government official in Islamabad said. The verdict by a court in Khyber district - part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt - comes as the US is struggling to convince Pakistan to reopen Nato supply routes to Afghanistan. The US raid last May that killed bin Laden led to the deepest crisis in a decade in the bilateral relations, as it revealed that the founder of al-Qaeda had been peacefully residing for years in Abbottabad, a military garrison city not far from the capital. Dr Afridi collected DNA samples which verified the presence in the Pakistani city of the mastermind behind the 9/11 New York terrorist attacks. The surgeon was arrested days after the operation, in which US Navy Seals stormed the compound where bin Laden was hiding and shot America's most wanted man to death. Leon Panetta, US defence secretary, said in a television interview in January that Mr Afridi had played a vital role in locating bin Laden's hideaway. The former CIA director said that the surgeon's actions were not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan. The conviction comes a day after a US Senate committee voted to cut $900m from the aid it gives to Pakistan unless Islamabad agreed to give US military access to Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the passage of US and Nato military goods to Afghanistan last November after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a US air strike. "We're going to basically take all of the money out of the pipeline if we can't get these routes open because we're not going to invest in a country that won't help us in a reasonable way to deal with the threats to our forces in Afghanistan," said Lindsey Graham, the leading Republican senator on the panel. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, attended a NATO summit in Chicago this week, during which he was expected to announce the reopening of the passage. However, he failed to do so because Islamabad is seeking a US apology for the soldiers" deaths and higher transit fees for the trucks.