A Pakistani lawyer, who served as the defense counsel for the doctor who had helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden, has been shot dead Tuesday.

Police said Samiullah Afridi was gunned down as he was returning to his home in the northwestern city of Peshawar in Pakistan.

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Police official Jamal Hussain said unidentified armed men shot the lawyer twice, in the abdomen and the neck. The victim died on the spot.

Media reports said Samiullah Afridi had just come back from abroad. Prior to the shooting, he had left Pakistan because his life was constantly in danger.

Samiullah Afridi was representing Dr. Shakil Afridi, who was jailed in 2012 and sentenced to 33 years in prison, after organizing a fake vaccination campaign aimed at gathering DNA samples from some of the residents at a compound in Abbottabad, where former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered by the United States.

The vaccination campaign is believed to have aided the U.S. forces track down al-Qaeda's head.

Prior to the 2011 raid of the U.S. Special Forces that killed Bin Laden, Afridi had been a subject of a massive manhunt that spanned more than a decade.

U.S officials regard Shakil Afridi as a hero.

His sentence had strained the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

Some $33 million in aid intended by the United States to Pakistan was withheld by some angry U.S. senators after Pakistan put Shakil Afridi in jail.

Last year, his lawyer Samiullah Afridi (no relations to Shakil Afridi) had stopped representing him, for safety reason.

Samiullah Afridi had said, "I took the case on humanitarian grounds. But now I have to look after my own life, which is more important."

Two Pakistan militant groups have claimed responsibility for the lawyer's death.

One is Jundullah, a Taliban splinter group while the other is a Taliban faction, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaatul Ahrar (TTP-JA).

Jundullah militants said they killed Samiullah Afridi because he was representing their enemy, Shakil Afridi.

TTP-JA, meanwhile, said they decided to kill Samiullah Afridi because they could not get to his client, who is in jail.

TagsPakistan, osama bin laden, Pakistan lawyer