US senators warn Pakistan on aid over bin Laden 
 
 WASHINGTON — Key US senators Wednesday demanded that Pakistan pardon a surgeon handed 33 years in prison for helping in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, warning that the decision could put US assistance at risk. 
 
 A tribal court in Khyber, a lawless district and extremist hotbed, sentenced surgeon Shakeel Afridi for treason after he agreed to collect DNA for US intelligence to verify the presence of the most-wanted Al-Qaeda leader. 
 
 Carl Levin and John McCain, the top senators from the two major US parties on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a joint statement called Afridi's sentence "shocking and outrageous." 
 
 "What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from treason. It was a courageous, heroic and patriotic act which helped to locate the most wanted terrorist in the world -- a mass murderer who had the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands," the two senators said. 
 
 McCain and Levin urged Pakistan to pardon and free Afridi "immediately." 
 
 "Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to US-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress's willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan," they said. 
 
 The United States has provided Pakistan with more than $18 billion since it joined the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks, but US officials have persistently worried that some elements of the Pakistani establishment have maintained support for extremists. 
 
 US lawmakers rejected calls to cut off aid but imposed tougher conditions after US forces in May last year killed bin Laden, who had been living a stone's throw away from Pakistan's elite military academy in Abbottabad. 
 
 Pakistan shut down supply routes -- its main assistance to US-led forces in Afghanistan -- after a border air raid in November killed 26 Pakistani troops. President Barack Obama has voiced regret, calling the deaths an accident, but stopped short of meeting demands for an apology. 
 
 Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari flew to Chicago for this week's NATO summit on Afghanistan amid signs of a deal on the supply routes. But no agreement materialized and Zardari left Chicago after only a brief meeting with Obama. 
 
 Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More » ||||| Jamil Afridi, left, brother of a Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi, says family and attorneys have been unable to meet with doctor convicted of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden. (Mohammad Sajjad/AP) 
 
 Pakistan’s new intelligence chief has postponed his first visit to Washington amid harsh U.S. criticism of the 33-year prison sentence imposed on Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor convicted of treason for aiding the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden. 
 
 Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam, appointed in March to head the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, was set to meet this week with his U.S. counterpart, CIA Director David H. Petraeus, a Pakistani official said. 
 
 But Islam canceled the trip because of “pressing commitments here,” the Pakistani military said in a brief statement Monday. “There is no other reason,” it added. 
 
 A senior Pakistani official said increased bilateral tensions rooted in the Afridi case and a long-simmering dispute over Pakistan’s refusal to reopen its territory to NATO supply convoys contributed to the postponement. 
 
 The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the CIA and the ISI are working on a new date for the meeting. 
 
 Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. track down bin Laden, was sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring against the state, officials said. (Qazi Rauf/AP) 
 
 The CIA declined to comment. 
 
 The ISI detained Afridi, a government surgeon, three weeks after U.S. commandos killed bin Laden. Afridi, 48, ran a fake hepatitis vaccination drive to collect bin Laden’s DNA as a way to verify the al-Qaeda leader’s presence in Abbottabad, the garrison town in Pakistan where he hid for six years until his death. 
 
 Senior U.S. officials and several members of Congress have expressed outrage at Pakistan’s punishment of Afridi, while lauding him as a hero and patriot. But Pakistani leaders call him a traitor who spied for a foreign power that launched an illegal unilateral operation. 
 
 For years, U.S. intelligence worked with the ISI to help identify al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan and around the world. That cooperation extended to the CIA’s drone war in Pakistan’s tribal region that has eliminated scores of militants. 
 
 But the U.S. decision not to inform Pakistan about the impending raid on bin Laden’s compound last May showed the degree to which Washington mistrusted its supposed ally’s spy agency and army. When Islam replaced Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who retired after leading the Pakistani spy agency since 2008, some in Washington saw an opening for improving the troubled U.S.-Pakistan alliance against terrorism. 
 
 The Afridi case is the biggest bilateral problem to occur on Islam’s watch. Members of Congress and top Obama administration officials have called on Pakistan to pardon and release Afridi, and some have implied that Pakistan is an ally of al-Qaeda. 
 
 On Monday, relatives and supporters of Afridi said at a news conference in the northwestern city of Peshawar that they will seek to overturn his conviction, handed down last week in a tribal court. Under that system, Afridi did not have the right to present evidence or have an attorney. 
 
 “The United States should help us,” Jamil Afridi, 50, brother of the doctor, said in an interview. 
 
 Peshawar prison authorities have barred him and the family’s attorneys from communicating with Shakil Afridi, saying a no-visitors policy had been imposed for his safety. The doctor’s wife and three children have not seen him for a year, according to Jamil Afridi. 
 
 Shakil Afridi has a right to an appeal under rules that govern the tribal areas, but lawyers seeking to represent him said they have been unable to obtain a copy of the court’s verdict, which they need to file an appeal. They also said they have been barred from getting the doctor’s signature, which they need to establish power of attorney so they can represent him. 
 
 Afridi lived in the semiautonomous Khyber Agency in Pakistan’s northwest, which the government says put him under the jurisdiction of tribal administrative officials who also are empowered to act as a court. 
 
 Pakistan has made clear that it considers the case an internal judicial matter and has otherwise not responded to U.S. calls for Afridi’s release. 
 
 Although they initially applauded bin Laden’s death, Pakistan’s leaders have since made it official policy to denounce the Abbottabad raid as a violation of national sovereignty. 
 
 Pakistan’s politicians and its public also view the CIA drone-fired missile strikes on suspected militants in the tribal belt as an affront to their nation’s sovereignty. Washington has ignored Islamabad’s repeated demands that it end such attacks. 
 
 The fifth drone strike in less than a week occurred Monday, local officials said, when missiles killed five suspected Islamist extremists in North Waziristan, where many militant groups are based. The relentless attacks have focused on areas near the Afghan border thought to harbor fighters allied with al-Qaeda. 
 
 Local authorities and tribesmen say that at least 30 fighters have died in the strikes since Wednesday, with many of the victims described as foreign jihadists, including Uzbeks and Arabs. 
 
 Special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
– The sun still is not shining on US-Pakistan relations. A US drone strike targeting suspected militants in northwest Pakistan killed 10 today, a move that will likely further inflame tensions between the two countries, reports Reuters. Pakistan has demanded an end to the strikes, which it considers a violation of its sovereignty—and it's still waiting for an apology for November's deadly strike. Adding to the most recent drama: Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin. McCain and Levin yesterday called the 33-year sentence handed to the doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden "shocking and outrageous." They threatened to end US financial assistance to Pakistan—which had totaled $18 billion since the war in Afghanistan began—if Shakil Afridi is not pardoned and freed "immediately," reports the AFP. "Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to US-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress' willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan," they wrote in a joint statement.