Robert Fisk: The going price of getting away with murder... would $33m be enough?

The Long View: Are the Pakistanis being so dastardly when they lock up a national who has helped in a murder? Robert Fisk

Monday, 28 May 2012

La Clinton hath spoken. Thirty-three million smackers lopped off Pakistan's aid budget because its spooks banged up poor old Dr Shakeel Afridi for 33 years after a secret trial. And, as the world knows, Dr Afridi's crime was to confirm the presence of that old has-been Osama bin Laden in his grotty Abbottabad villa.

Well, that will teach the Pakistanis to mess around with a brave doctor who is prepared to help the American institution that tortures and murders its enemies. Forget the CIA's black prisons and rendition and water-boarding, and the torture of the innocents in the jails of our friendly dictators. Dr Afridi was just doing the free world a favour. And WOW, Dr Afridi got shopped by Leon Pannetta when he was CIA boss, and now Barack Obama is accused of letting him down.

Well, I pause here. Dr Afridi was brought before a secret trial in the Khyber tribal area – no charge sheets, no lawyers, no statements from the defendant or the prosecution, just a measly accusation of conspiracy against the state of Pakistan and "high treason". I've never known the difference between "treason" and "high treason" but – since Pakistan's security apparatus is a mirror image of the British Empire – I assume it was invented by us. "High treason" means treason against the monarch. By fingering Bin Laden, after using a ruse about vaccinating his family against hepatitis B to gain access to him, Dr Afridi was committing treason against King Asif Ali Zardari, otherwise known as the President of Pakistan.

But hold on a moment. Let's suppose Vladimir Putin sent a KGB/FSB hit squad to Britain to murder a former agent called Alexander Litvinenko who had turned against his old spymasters. And let's suppose that the Russians murdered Litvinenko. Which – in real life – they did. And Litvinenko – in real life – was indeed a trusted agent of the Russians, just as Bin Laden was a much-admired servant of the CIA when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.

Getting a bit close to home? Well, let's go a stage further. Supposing Litvinenko was murdered after being identified by a friendly British GP – working for the KGB/FSB – who vaccinated the Litvinenko family against hep B. What do Messrs Cameron and Clegg and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord High Executioner and all the other nabobs do? Do they accuse the British GP of treason, clap him in irons, stage a hush-hush trial covered by the Official Secrets Act and send the chap off to rot in the Tower of London for – say – 33 years? More