$33m slap for Pakistan over Bin Laden doctor - Sydney Morning Herald

JUST $US33 million in aid a year - a drop in the ocean of the more than $US1 billion the United States pours into Pakistan annually - will be withheld in protest after Pakistan jailed the doctor who helped US forces find Osama bin Laden.

On Wednesday, Pakistan sentenced Shakeel Afridi to 33 years in prison for treason, after he helped the US last year confirm bin Laden was living in a compound in the northern city of Abbottabad.

In a symbolic riposte, the US Senate appropriations committee has announced it will withhold the $US33 million ($A33.8 million) in aid - $US1 million for each year of the sentence. The proposal won unanimous support in the committee and will go to the Senate floor on Thursday.

''We need Pakistan, Pakistan needs us, but we don't need Pakistan double-dealing and not seeing the justice in bringing Osama bin Laden to an end,'' Republican senator Lindsey Graham said.

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Dr Afridi's sentence was ''unjust and unwarranted''. Dr Afridi ''was instrumental in taking down one of the world's most wanted murderers. That was clearly in Pakistan's interest, as well as ours and the rest of the world's,'' Mrs Clinton said.

Dr Afridi is said to be in poor health, ''weak and depressed'', and is being kept away from other prisoners in a Peshawar jail for his own safety.

A former Pakistani ambassador to the US, Tariq Fatemi, told The Saturday Age the US could not dictate to Pakistan's courts. ''This is the style of the USA, to react like this to the action of other countries without considering their sensitivities or respecting their domestic law,'' he said.

Dr Afridi helped confirm the world's most wanted terrorist was living about a kilometre from the Pakistan Military Academy. He did so by running a fake hepatitis B vaccination drive to obtain DNA samples of residents inside. These were then checked to see if they matched other members of bin Laden's family.

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A report from retired Pakistan army brigadier Shaukat Qadir, based on reports from Dr Afridi's interrogation, said the doctor ''had no idea of whom or what he was looking for. He was paid to follow instructions.''

The US-Pakistani relationship reached its nadir after bin Laden's assassination last year, but relations were also marred by continued drone attacks in border areas and the accidental attack by US helicopters on a Pakistani border checkpoint that killed 24 soldiers.

This week at the NATO summit in Chicago, US President Barack Obama snubbed Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari when Mr Zardari refused to re-open NATO supply routes into Afghanistan.

With KHUDAYAR KHAN, GUARDIAN