Updated:
06/24/2007 09:00:58 PM
PST
NEW JERSEY, JUNE 16 - The Pakistani journalist who reported
on a U.S. airstrike that killed an al-Qaeda operative was
found shot to death in a remote tribal region Friday six
months after vanishing.
Hidayatullah Khan disappeared in
December.
His abduction came days after he
contradicted Pakistani army claims that the death of Abu
Hamza Rabia, a leading Arab militant in al-Qaeda, and four
others on December 1 was the result of an accidental
munitions explosion. On the basis of photographs he took at
the scene, Khan said Rabia was killed by Hellfire - a US missile
fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
Villagers said the explosion was caused by a missile fired
from a plane or a drone.
Relatives found Khan's body 3km south
of Mir Ali near the Afghan border on Friday.
He had been handcuffed and appeared to have been shot from
behind while trying to escape, his brother, Ehsanullah, told
the BBC.
Reporters Without Borders
have
reported that he had been shot several times in the head,
probably on Thursday.
The journalist, who was in his mid-30s, had lost a lot of weight
and had grown a long beard.
His brother told BBC the handcuffs were
of a type usually used by security forces.
Khan's brothers said in a joint statement that he was
kidnapped and killed by official security apparatus -
meaning ISI.
Both the militants and the authorities denied knowledge
of his whereabouts during the six months he was missing,
said BBC.
During the six months he was missing,
many Pakistani journalists had made it clear they suspected
the military secret services of involvement.
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Hidayatullah
Khan |
Pervez Shaukat, President of
the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, had in February,
accused the authorities or harassing those who were
campaigning for Khan’s release. One government source told
journalists in Peshawar, "The more noise you make, the more
you prolong Hayatullah’s captivity."
After the US authorities
were accused of holding the journalist, US Consul in
Peshawar, Mike Spangler, said on May 10 that the United
States had "read the reports on the disappearance of
Hayatullah Khan (...), but is not in possession of any
information about him."
He was arrested in an
arbitrary fashion by US forces in 2002 when he was trying to
cover al-Qaeda and Taliban activity in the border region. In
2003, the Pakistani military also harassed him the following
year after he wrote about the misuse of army vehicles in Mir
Ali.
'US missile'
Mr Khan was seized by unidentified gunmen
on 5 December.
Days earlier, the Pakistani authorities
had said an al-Qaeda commander they named as Abu Hamza Rabia
had been killed with four others in a blast at an alleged
militant hideout in North Waziristan.
The official version was that bomb-making
materials had exploded by accident.
But locals said the men were killed by a
missile fired from an unmanned US drone.
Mr Khan took photographs of what appeared
to be pieces of a US missile at the scene.
Pakistan is a close ally of the US in its
"war on terror" but reports of US strikes on Pakistani soil
provoke anger among opponents of the government in
Islamabad.
Hayatullah Khan worked for a Pakistani
Urdu-language newspaper Ausaf and
the European Press
Photo Agency (EPA).
The New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists said he had in the past been threatened by
security forces, suspected Taliban members and tribesmen for
his reporting.
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