ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mazari has raised some serious concerns over the US push for a prisoner swap agreement with Pakistan.
"The US has said it would agree to release Dr Aafia Siddiqui into Pakistan’s custody and in exchange would seek the release of Dr Shakil Afridi, a release issued here said.
However, Dr Mazari felt that there were serious issues over the US attaching two conditions on the release of Dr Aafia to Pakistan: one, that Pakistan accepts she is a terrorist and should complete her sentence in Pakistan, and secondly her trial in the US be accepted as fair and justified.
She contended that such conditions were unacceptable and hoped the government would not accept any unilateral conditions being forced upon it by the US government, which was under strong Congressional pressure to seek the release of Dr Afridi, a collaborator of the American government’s illegal activities in Pakistan, whom the US Congress wanted to welcome as an American hero.
Dr Mazari said, “If the prisoner swap agreement is to be an acceptable one it should be unconditional. If the US is demanding conditionalities then there must be mutual conditionalities in terms of serving prison terms and labelling of swapped prisoners as “terrorists” or “traitors””.
She said that the people of Pakistan wanted to see Dr Aafia return to Pakistan but not to be branded a “terrorist” by the government simply neither at US behest nor to remain incarcerated because of a highly biased US trial and conviction.
Internews
