A Pakistani court will on Wednesday, hear Shakil Afridi’s case, the doctor accused of helping the US track down al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
The Peshawar High Court is due to hear an appeal, the first time it will be heard in an open court in Pakistan Shakil Afridi.
His imprisonment caused outrage and saw the US cut federal aid to Pakistan by $33m (£27m) – $1m for every year of his jail sentence.
US President Donald Trump promised in his 2016 election campaign that he would get Dr Afridi released in “two minutes” if elected but that never happened.
While the doctor is considered a hero in the US, in Pakistan he is seen by many as a traitor who brought humiliation to the country – US Navy Seals had been able to fly in, kill the 9/11 attacks mastermind and get away with his body without even being challenged, far less stopped.
Shakil Afridi was never formally charged for his role in the 2011 operation to hunt down and kill the world’s most-wanted man.
And it raised uncomfortable questions about whether Pakistan’s military, which runs its security policy, was aware Bin Laden was in the country.
Pakistan remains an uneasy partner to this day in the US-led fight against militant Islam.
Dr Afridi was the top medic in Khyber tribal district and as head of health services had overseen a number of US-funded vaccination programmes.
As a government employee, he set up a similar hepatitis B vaccination programme, including in the garrison town of Abbottabad, where it turned out Bin Laden was living right under the noses of the military.
The US intelligence plan was to obtain a blood sample from one of the children living in the Abbottabad compound, so that DNA tests could determine whether or not they were relatives of Bin Laden.
It’s thought that one of Dr Afridi’s staff visited the compound and collected blood.
Dr Afridi was taken into custody on 23 May 2011, 20 days after Bin Laden was killed. He is thought to have been in his late forties at the time.
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