Pakistani doctor jailed for helping CIA find bin Laden.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities have sentenced a doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Ladento 33 years in jail on charges of treason, officials said, a move that drew angry condemnation from U.S. officials already at odds with Islamabad.

Shakil Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign, in which he collected DNA samples, that is believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track down bin Laden in a Pakistani town.

The al Qaeda chieftain was killed in a unilateral U.S. special forces raid in the town of Abbottabad in May last year.

"Dr Shakil has been sentenced to 33 years imprisonment and a fine of 320,000 Pakistani rupees," said Mohammad Nasir, a government official in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where the jail term will be served. He gave no further details.

Afridi is the first person to be sentenced by Pakistani authorities in the bin Laden case.

The sentence was handed down under tribal laws, which unlike the national penal code do not carry the death penalty for treason.

U.S. officials and lawmakers said Afridi deserved only praise.

"We continue to see no basis for these charges, for him being held, for any of it," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters, declining specific comment on the 33-year sentence given to Afridi.

A senior U.S. official with knowledge of counter-terrorism operations against al Qaeda in Pakistansaid the doctor's actions "helped save Pakistani and American lives."

"His activities were not treasonous, they were heroic and patriotic," said the official.

Two senior U.S. senators called the ruling "shocking and outrageous" and urged Islamabad to pardon and release the doctor immediately.

"He should be praised and rewarded for his actions, not punished and slandered," Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Carl Levin said in a statement.

"Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to U.S.-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress's willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan," they said.

Bin Laden's long presence in Pakistan -- he was believed to have stayed there for years -- despite the worldwide manhunt for him raised suspicions in Washington that Pakistani intelligence officials may have sheltered him.

Pakistani officials deny this and say an intelligence gap enabled bin Laden to live here undetected.

No one has yet been charged for helping the al Qaeda leader take refuge in Pakistan. A government commission tasked with investigating how he managed to evade capture by Pakistani authorities for so long is widely accused of being ineffective.

Afridi's imprisonment comes at a sensitive time, with both sides engaged in difficult talks over re-opening NATO supply routes to U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.

Senior U.S. officials had made public appeals for Pakistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid, to release Afridi, detained within weeks of the raid that killed bin Laden and strained ties with Islamabad.

In January, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a television interview that Afridi and his team had been key in finding bin Laden, describing him as helpful and insisting the doctor had not committed treason or harmed Pakistan.

U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher introduced legislation in February calling for Afridi to be granted American citizenship and said it was "shameful and unforgivable that our supposed allies" charged him.

VIOLATION OF SOVEREIGNTY

The U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad, just a few hours drive from the capital Islamabad, humiliated Pakistan's powerful military, which described the move as a violation of sovereignty.

Intelligence cooperation between the United States and Pakistan, vital for the fight against militancy, has subsequently been cut drastically.

Afridi's prison term could complicate efforts to break a deadlock in talks over the re-opening of land routes through Pakistan to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan closed the supply routes, also seen as vital to the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan before the end of 2014, in protest against November's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO air attack along the Afghan border.

Afridi's case highlighted severe tensions between Pakistan and the United States.

He was arrested soon after bin Laden was killed, and has not been publicly heard of since. Seventeen health workers who worked with Afridi on the vaccination drive were fired in March, according to termination letters seen by Reuters, which described them as having acted "against the national interest".

On May 2, one year after bin Laden's death, some of them appeared at the site where bin Laden's run-down cement and brick house stood before it was demolished by Pakistani authorities.

"He (Afridi) was very nice to all the people in the team and did his job very diligently," Naseem Bibi, one of the health workers told Reuters, holding one of the notices.

"Yes he was very interested in this house on that day (of the vaccination drive) but I am not sure why."

The sackings underscored Pakistan's lingering fury over the bin Laden affair, which exposed the military to rare public criticism, both because of the presence of the al Qaeda chief in the country, and the fact that U.S. special forces just swept in and out of the country and faced no resistance.

U.S. sources told Reuters that Afridi played only a marginal role in the commando operation which killed bin Laden, although he had helped American operatives locate and follow the "courier" that led them to the hideout in Abbottabad.

The sources suggested that the government's treatment of Afridi was harsh because the case was being used by Pakistan, including its powerful intelligence agency, to "save face" over the failure to spot or intercept the U.S. commando team that carried out the raid.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Mark Hosenball and Missy Ryan in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)