On Thursday, the Interior Ministry sealed the international aid group Save the Children’s office in Islamabad and asked foreign staff to leave the country.
According to sources, Islamabad sealed the Save the Children office in the federal capital today, and the Interior Ministry told the aid group that its foreign employees should be out of Pakistan within fifteen days.
Sources also added that the ministry has not given the NGO officials any particular reason for the decision.
“We have sealed the Save the Children office on government instructions,” Kamran Cheema, a senior government official, told AFP.
Save the Children and other aid groups have come under government suspicion because of media reports they had come into contact with a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hunt down bin Laden.
Read: Another legal blow for Dr Shakil Afridi
Bin Laden was killed in May last year when US special forces raided his hideout in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad. Pakistan, while a U.S. security ally, objected to the secret U.S. raid as a violation of its sovereignty.
Afridi was arrested soon after bin Laden was killed. He ran a vaccination campaign in Abbottabad and used cheek swabs to try to gather DNA from bin Laden.
After his arrest, Afridi was vilified by many Pakistanis for what they saw as his treason for helping the United States. He was sentenced to 33 years in jail this year.
Save the Children has worked in Pakistan for over 40 years, employing more than 2,000 Pakistani staff. (Photo News / Agencies)
