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{{The United States spy body, Central Intelligence Agency CIA has ended the use of vaccine programmes in its spying operations amid concerns for the safety of health workers, the White House has said.}}

In a letter to US public health schools, a White House aide said the CIA stopped such practices in August.

The CIA used a fake vaccine programme to try to find Osama Bin Laden before US special forces killed him in 2011.

The CIA’s move comes after a wave of deadly attacks by militants on polio vaccination workers in Pakistan.

“By publicising this policy, our objective is to dispel one canard that militant groups have used as justification for cowardly attacks against vaccination providers,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd was quoted by British media.

Sixty-six cases of polio have been declared in Pakistan since January, compared with only eight during the same period last year.

And more than 60 polio workers and security personnel were killed between December 2012 and April 2014, most of them in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to Pakistani officials and humanitarian workers.

The geographical spread of the cases suggests they are mostly sourced to the north-western Waziristan tribal region, the BBC’s Ilyas Khan reports from Islamabad. Militants controlling the region banned vaccination there, saying health workers may include American spies.

The World Health Organization and the UN’s agency for children have issued a statement saying they appreciated the US government’s commitment.

In a letter dated 16 May, the White House assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, Lisa Monaco, wrote that CIA director John Brennan had directed the agency to cease “operational use of vaccine programmes”.

“Similarly, the agency will not seek to obtain or exploit DNA or other genetic material acquired through such programmes,” she wrote, adding the policy applied worldwide to US and non-US persons alike.

Genetic material obtained through a fake door-to-door hepatitis B vaccination programme reportedly helped the CIA confirm Bin Laden’s whereabouts in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The al-Qaeda leader was killed in a May 2011 raid by US special forces.

The Pakistani doctor accused of running the vaccination campaign remains in jail.

Dr Shakil Afridi was convicted of ties to militant groups, which he denies, and imprisoned in 2012. The move is widely seen as punishment for his helping the CIA.

Correspondents say he is regarded as a traitor by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Mr Boyd, the CIA spokesman, said “many obstacles” stand in the way of vaccination programmes, including myths they cause use sterility or HIV and claims they are spy programmes run by Western governments.

“While the CIA can do little about the former, the [CIA] director felt he could do something important to dispel the latter and he acted,” Mr Boyd said.

“It is important to note that militant groups have a long history of attacking humanitarian aid workers in Pakistan and those attacks began years before the raid against the Bin Laden compound and years before any press reports claiming a CIA-sponsored vaccination programme.”

BBC

{ {{Roland Kastler the founder of Germany Butchery in Kigali. Here he had visited IGIHE on Tuesday Afternoon.}} }

{{The Proprietor of {‘Germany Butchery}’ located near {Sulfo Industries} says his life has been in danger in the past three years after enduring several attacks from a business rival.}}

Mr Roland Kastler 54 a German national says he has lived in Rwanda for over seventeen years and has been married to a Rwandan woman for the past eleven years. The couple has two children all teenagers.

Speaking to IGIHE this afternoon, Mr Kastler narrated that before he established his own Butchery business he had been working at ‘La Galette’ also owned by Mike a German national married to a woman identified as Tsiapetraka Claudette a Malagasy national.

Tsiapetraka is accused by Kastler of making his life a hell on earth. Kastler suspects that the attacks and attempts on his life by Tsiapetraka are due to business rivalry.

“Tsiapetraka is jealous and has been provoking me in all manners. She just wants me to hit back and I get imprisoned,” Kastler said adding that this woman at one time found him taking hot coffee at a table and grabbed the cup and poured it directly into his face.

Kastler added, “Three months ago she hit my head me with a coke bottle and I fell down. She rushed to hit me with a sharp instrument and I dodged her then ran away. This woman is attempting to kill me.”

Recently on may 17, Kastler says he was attacked by Tsiapetraka when she found him inside the {‘Germany Butchery’} premises where she picked products worth Frw 25000 but refused to pay. Later she slapped me and broke my glasses worth U$1100.

Tsiapetraka is also accused of regularly attacking his Rwandan wife however; the Rwandan woman says she has persistently ignored her just to stay out of any trouble.

“I take this as business rivalry. I can’t hit back at her,” she says requesting her names not to be mentioned in the story.

Mr Kastler and wife say they have on several occasions reported the matter to Police and that Ms Tsiapetraka has always refused to respond to summon letters from Police.

The couple says, “we are worried of our safety and we want to remain safe. We want concerned authorities to help us fix this problem because it involves our lives.”
However, by press time, Tsiapetraka was reportedly seen at Muhima Police station.

Below Mr Roland Kastler is seen badly beaten and bruised after he was attacked by Tsiapetraka