Pakistani doctor arranged fake vaccination program to infiltrate Abbottabad compound
The CIA recruited a Pakistani doctor to organize a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan in order to obtain Osama bin Laden’s DNA, the Guardian reports. Dr. Shakil Afridi, a senior health official who oversees the Khyber region, was allegedly approached by the U.S. intelligence agency last summer after it had tracked bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to the al-Qaeda leader’s Abbottabad compound. Dr. Afridi travelled to the Pakistani town in March to set up a free hepatitis B vaccination program, and paid government health workers, among the few people with access to the bin laden compound, generous sums to take part, thereby bypassing health services management. A nurse, Mukhtar Bibi, gained access to the compound while Afridi waited outside, and reportedly obtained DNA from bin Laden’s children, which was then compared to a sample taken from his deceased sister. Afridi is now in the custody of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, having been arrested for cooperating with the U.S. Relations between the two countries remained severely strained following the U.S. Killing of bin Laden on May 1st.