FOXNews.com: Pakistan officials: Doctor's jailing was payback for bin Laden raid, U.S. need to move on

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Pakistan officials: Doctor's jailing was payback for bin Laden raid, U.S. need to move on May 25th 2012, 12:30 Top Pakistani government officials say the prison sentence for the doctor who helped the CIA track down Usama bin Laden is a payback by the country's top military officials angry about the raid happening under their noses and that the United States needs to move beyond the issue. "There has been an over-reaction," one of the officials told Fox News. The U.S. "needs to take a deep breath. You got Usama bin Laden. We're happy he got killed. But the way it was done we're not happy with. We didn't like that." Dr. Shakil Afridi was sentenced Wednesday to 33 years prison for high treason. He ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed the Al Qaeda leader in a stealth, May 2011 raid. The same official said the Afridi issue has now gotten in the way of negations between the countries about Pakistan re-opening overland supply routes to Afghanistan. They were closed after a U.S. attack on the Pakistani side of the border killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.  "The US is allowing one issue to become so bloated, at a difficult time," the official said. Still, the official acknowledged the Pakistan government needs to re-examine the entire Afridi situation. "It is a case where we really need to see if Afridi was given ample opportunity to defend himself. And if that is not the case we should be talking about it," he said. One of the founders of Pakistan's constitution and a top Supreme Court lawyer in that country tells Fox News that Dr. Afridi should not have been tried by a tribal court and would not have been convicted if he had faced a federal court. "The Jirga didn't have the jurisdiction and they exercised power without jurisdiction," said Ahmed Kasuri, senior attorney in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. "And if some court were to apply power without jurisdiction, it's a nullity in the eyes of the law. It's got no significance. The appellate authority can forthright set aside that decision." The treatment of Dr. Afridi continues to bring outrage in Washington, with officials calling for his release. "All of us are outraged at the imprisonment and sentence of some 33 years, virtually a death sentence to the doctor," Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday. "It frankly outraged all of us."

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