The lawyer who represented Dr. Shakeel Afridi, the doctor who unwittingly assisted the CIA in their hunt for Osama bin Laden, was shot to death in northwest Pakistan near Peshawar.

Samiullah Afridi, who had been under constant threats since defending the doctor, was killed while walking home. Two separate terrorist groups have claimed responsibilty for the killing.

CNN:

The doctor helped the CIA set up a fake vaccination campaign in an attempt to collect DNA samples from relatives of Bin Laden in an effort to verify his presence in a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The Qaeda leader was killed in a U.S. raid on the compound in May 2011.

It was unclear which of the two groups claiming responsibility for the attack was actually behind it.

Fahad Marwat, a spokesman for the militant group Jundallah, told CNN that Afridi was on the group's hit list.

But Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, said his group had carried out the assassination because Samiullah Afridi defended the doctor, whom he described as "a friend" of bin Laden's killers.

CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen said Jundallah is "kind of a splinter group" of the Pakistani Taliban that's "been around for a long time."

"They're extremely violent," he said. "They've been killing all sorts of religious minorities in Pakistan."

Last month, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside a Shiite mosque in the city of Rawalpindi.

Bergen said Dr. Afridi is "a very unpopular figure in Pakistan" because of the perception that he was involved in helping find Bin Laden.

"And his lawyer, by extension, would also be seen as an unpopular person because of that perception," he said.

But Bergen said he didn't think the doctor played a key role in the hunt for Bin Laden.

"The idea was the doctor and his staff would take DNA samples from the Bin Laden kids as part of this 'vaccination program,'" he said. "That never happened because the kids never came out."

Although Dr. Afridi was working for U.S. intelligence, "the CIA wasn't telling the doctor, you're helping us find bin Laden," Bergen said.

After the killing of bin Laden, health workers administering polio vaccinations have come to be viewed with suspicion by many Pakistanis. The vaccination teams have repeatedly been targeted by militants.

Dr. Afridi will have a hard time getting another lawyer to represent him as he appeals his sentence. He is serving 23 years for aiding terrorists, although the terror group denies even knowing him. The Pakistani government wanted to charge him with treason, but could't make a case.

The idea that these ignoramuses targeted a lawyer for a doctor who didn't help the CIA find bin Laden - and didn't know he was carrying out the wishes of the CIA - is revealing of a mindset that thirsts for blood. You don't have to be "guilty" of anything for these psychopaths to imagine killing you.

Following the incident with the doctor vaccinating against hepatitis in order to find bin Laden's children, aid workers vaccinating Pakistanis against polio have been attacked and murdered. The violence that comes so naturally to these thugs knows no reason or logic. To kill is a way of life and the only way to fight them is to put them down like rabid dogs.

Or, we could get them a job, I suppose.