Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
another one down… same as Mr Khan… same MO
Hayatullah Khan
June 16, 2006, in Miran Shah, Pakistan
Khan’s body was found by villagers in the North Waziristan town of Miran Shah, where he had been kidnapped six months earlier. Khan was abducted on December 5, 2005, by five gunmen who ran his car off the road as his younger brother, Haseenullah, watched helplessly. Local government officials and family members said** Khan, 32, had been found handcuffed and shot several times**. His body appeared frail and he had grown a long beard since he was last seen, Pakistani journalists told CPJ.
The day before his abduction, Khan had photographed the apparent remnants of a U.S.-made missile said to have struck a home in the tribal region’s main town, Miran Shah, on December 1, 2005, killing senior al-Qaeda figure Hamza Rabia. The pictures–widely distributed by the European Pressphoto Agency on the same day they were shot–contradicted the Pakistani government’s explanation that Rabia had died in a blast caused by explosives located within the house. International media identified the fragments in the photographs as part of a Hellfire missile, possibly fired from a U.S. drone.**
Khan, who was also a reporter for the Urdu-language daily Ausaf, had received numerous prior threats from Pakistani security forces, Taliban members, and local tribesmen because of his reporting.
During his six-month disappearance, government officials provided Khan’s family with numerous and often contradictory accounts of his whereabouts: Khan was in government custody, soon to be released; Khan had been abducted by “miscreant;” he had been taken by Waziristan mujahedeen; he had been flown to the military base at Rawalpindi and then detained in Kohat air base.
After the body was found, Khan’s relatives were told by hospital workers that he had suffered five or six bullet wounds and that one hand had been manacled in handcuffs typically used by Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, dismissed the reported presence of the handcuffs as circumstantial and said the cuffs could have been planted to incriminate the government. No autopsy was performed.
An investigation led by High Court Justice Mohammed Reza Khan was conducted, but the results were not made public. Khan’s family said they were not interviewed by the judge or other investigators. North West Frontier Gov. Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai told CPJ that North Waziristan was not secure enough to risk exposing a judicial figure to kidnapping or death.