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WEEKLY
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| Taliban seek release of militants to free Chinese |
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Monday, September 08, 2008
by Delawar Jan
DIR: Maulana Fazlullah-led militants in Swat Sunday said they would not release the kidnapped Chinese engineers till the release of arrested Taliban.
Talking to The News from an undisclosed location, spokesman of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Muslim Khan said 38 security forces personnel are in their captivity for more than a month but the government is least bothered about them.
Muslim Khan said firstly around 70 of their fellows, currently in government’s custody, will be swapped for the 38 captives and then they would discuss the release of Chinese engineers and their Pakistani guard and driver. “Until the exchange of prisoners, Chinese will be our guests and we have no intention to harm them,” he said.
Chinese engineers kidnapped from white cap manufacturing Khall town of Dir Lower could not be recovered despite a passage of 10 days while the local jirga has also failed to initiate steps for their recovery except deciding to close a road linking Dir Lower and the troubled Swat valley.
Police sources said they, along with the local people, were making efforts for recovery of the engineers but no progress has been made so far. The sources said police had been summoning officials working on different mobile towers in the area to quiz them as part of investigation. However, the sources said police didn’t find any lead about the kidnappers hitherto.
There are reports that police had identified a person as kidnapper and missed an opportunity to arrest him after being summoned for interrogation. However, a senior official of Dir Lower police was not ready to accept that the accused had given police the slip. “It is now an open secret that they are in the custody of Taliban,” he remarked.
On the other hand, a highly placed police source said the officials had missed a golden chance to capture the accused. The source, privy to all developments in the Chinese abduction case, even went to the extent of saying that the alleged kidnapper had confessed to police to have abducted the engineers but said now they were no longer in his captivity.
He deceived the police, the source added, when he offered to contact the captors of the Chinese to ask for their release. Now police have been pressuring four other officials, Taimur, Irfan, Wahid and Rashid, of the Zong cellular company to make them confess in black and white that they knew the abductor. The officials have been kept in habeas corpus since September 2 but the officials said they would not succumb to such pressure tactics. “We have given a statement that we will not change,” one of them said by phone. Two of the ‘held’ officials, Taimur and Irfan, were allowed to go out Friday night but all their belongings, including mobile phones, were confiscated to ensure they come back.
Meanwhile, a 15-member jirga also failed to do much for recovery of the Zong company’s kidnapped officials but decided to close a road liking Tormang in Dir Lower and Qalagay in Swat to foil the movement of Taliban.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
