Pakistan court orders reinstatement of fired nurses linked to CIA's plan to locate Osama
Washington, Mar. 15 : More than a dozen Pakistani nurses who were fired for having connections with a CIA plan to confirm Osama bin Laden's location have been reinstated, a Pakistani court has said.
Nearly 17 nurses were originally let go in the wake of the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
According to ABC News, in the weeks after the operation, U.S. officials revealed that a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, had run a vaccination programme on behalf of the CIA in Abbottabad in a bid to collect DNA from bin Laden family members.
The plan was unsuccessful, but after it was made public, Afridi was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for high treason and his nurses were fired.
The Pakistani court that sentenced Afridi later released charging documents that claimed he was convicted not for his role in the CIA programme, but for aiding a Pakistani terrorist organization, a claim the terror group denied, the report said.
When ABC News spoke to one of the fired nurses last May, she said she believed Afridi should be 'publicly hanged'.
She added that they did not consider him a hero. He is a traitor, a liar and a fraud.
As the nurses get back to work, Afridi, considered a hero by some U.S. officials, remains in a Pakistani prison.