(PPF/IFEX) – Dilawar Khan Wazir, correspondent for BBC and Pakistan’s “Daily Dawn”, was released a day after being kidnapped. The journalist, who reached the BBC office in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, on the evening of 21 November 2006, said he had been held blindfolded and was kicked, slapped and questioned about his reporting […]
(PPF/IFEX) – Dilawar Khan Wazir, correspondent for BBC and Pakistan’s “Daily Dawn”, was released a day after being kidnapped. The journalist, who reached the BBC office in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, on the evening of 21 November 2006, said he had been held blindfolded and was kicked, slapped and questioned about his reporting and his sources. The journalist did not know the identity of his abductors.
According to the BBC, Khan, who has been reporting on the Pakistani army’s fight with pro-Taliban militants in the troubled Waziristan region on the Afghan border, was seized on the afternoon of 20 November from the outskirts of Islamabad as he was on his way to his home in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, located in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Six or seven men snatched him from his taxi, bundled him into another vehicle and blindfolded him. He does not know where he was taken.
Khan was held for more than 24 hours and then left in a wooded area outside Islamabad on 21 November.
On 20 November, unidentified persons also tried unsuccessfully to lure Khan’s brother, Zulfiqar Ali, into accompanying them on the pretext that the journalist was seriously hurt in hospital. In August, Khan’s 15-year-old brother, Taimur, was killed, although it is not confirmed that the attack was linked to the journalist’s work (see IFEX alert of 30 August 2006). The journalist and his family have been targeted on a number of other occasions. The family says it has no personal or tribal enemies. In February 2005, two journalists in the same car as Khan were killed when shots were fired at their vehicle in the town of Wana in South Waziristan. He was unhurt.
Khan left his home in Wana in 2005 and moved to Dera Ismail Khan after receiving threats from militants.
