Pakistan sentenced a guy to 33 years for helping us find Bin Laden

[cthulu2016]

Granted, the guy was guilty of espionage of some sort... but do they have no PR shop in Pakistan?

The CIA got this guy to pretend to be a public health official vaccinating people or something, with the hope of getting DNA samples of the people in the compound d where Bin Laden was. The guy did not know that the CIA was looking for Bin Laden specifically.

Anyway... 33 years in jail. (Don't we protect our damn assets?)

[MADem]

1. We cut their aid by a million bucks for every year the guy is held.

I have a feeling he'll be sent abroad permanently...and be a US citizen sooner rather than later.

On edit--a link: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Americas/US-cuts-Pak-aid-for-jailing-doc-who-helped-track-Laden/Article1-860896.aspx

[HipChick]

2. American Rules do not apply in other countries..

[gratuitous]

3. What?

You mean Pakistan has, like, its own laws and stuff? And they determine how to apply them? Has John Bolton been notified? This is surely an outrage of some sort. Please wait until after the holiday weekend, and we'll be sure to hear precisely how this is an offense against America.

[HipChick]

5. Just think if another country had told the US Racial segregation in the South was wrong..

[JackRiddler]

4. Several words of your headline are debatable: "us," "find" and "Bin Laden"

If you believe the story, he worked for a foreign espionage agency with a criminal history far more terrible than Bin Ladin's (which is why OBL was, appropriately enough, a CIA asset). The CIA has done more damage to Pakistanis directly than Bin Ladin did.

This gentleman took DNA from strangers (search without a warrant) on a false pretext, and his acts served to make people paranoid about a vital public health measure (vaccination).

Then the CIA screwed their own spy, as usual. Should he be getting 33 years? Certainly not. That's wildly excessive. But maybe how this plays in the US isn't as important to Pakistani PR teams as how this plays in Pakistan.

[cthulu2016]

6. You are correct

The OP is pretty cheeky, but I agree with most of what you say here.

The guy was a US agent operating in Pakistan and surely guilty of serious infractions of Pakistani law.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. I'm personally kind of conflicted on this.

At the least this doctor was guilty of violating his oath by acting on behalf of the CIA in a "vaccination" programme designed to get DNA samples.

A hypothetical for you: let's presume for a moment that a Nazi war criminal was gotten out of Europe and brought to the US after the war in Operation Paperclip because of their scientific or technical knowledge. Let's further presume that Israeli intelligence agents sought this hypothetical individual, and enlisted the aid of American citizens to help them locate him, and they then sent in a covert kill team. And further that Israeli responsibility for the targeted assassination of a known war criminal was general knowledge, and the assistance of a US citizen in helping a foreign intelligence agency carry out this assassination became public. Would this result in Federal espionage charges, do you think? Yes, or no.