Pakistan’s spy agencies are suspected of ties to reporter’s death

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Last week, a prominent Pakistani investigative reporter published an article alleging that al-Qaeda had infiltrated Pakistan’s navy and carried out the recent attack on a naval air base. On Tuesday, the journalist’s body — his face severely beaten — was found 100 miles from his home in this capital city, two days after he disappeared.

Syed Saleem Shahzad’s killing, other journalists and human rights activists said they suspected, was payback — not from militants, but from Pakistan’s fearsome spy agencies. Shahzad had written before about their dealings with Islamist insurgents, and he had said that intelligence officers had warned him.

“I am forwarding this email to you for your record only if in case something happens to me or my family in future,” Shahzad, 40, wrote in October to the Pakistan representative of Human Rights Watch, sharing details of a meeting he had just had with officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. Shahzad suggested that they had threatened him, an experience that Pakistani journalists, activists and politicians say is not uncommon.

But those threats rarely end in killing, and Shahzad’s death immediately sparked fresh criticism of Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus. The “agencies,” as they are known here, last month faced unusual public condemnation for their apparent failure to locate Osama bin Laden in a garrison city, as well as allegations that they had harbored him.

On Tuesday, the focus was on activities Pakistan’s spies are better known for domestically: punishing those who cross the influential military, the main locus of power in a nation with a weak civilian government.

An ISI official denied that the agency was involved in Shahzad’s death. “Show us the proof. Otherwise, it’s totally absurd,” the official said noting that Shahzad’s coverage might also have angered militant organizations. Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, told journalists that the motive appeared to be “personal enmity.”

Shahzad’s killing also renewed attention on the alleged crossover between militants and Pakistan’s security forces, some of which he outlined in a recent article for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online, for which he was the Pakistan bureau chief. According to Shahzad’s reporting, last week’s attack on a Karachi naval base was a response to the Pakistani navy’s detection of al-Qaeda cells within its ranks, and it followed failed discussions between the navy and al-Qaeda about the release of naval officers arrested on suspicion of links to the terrorist group.

On Monday, Pakistani media reported that a former navy commando had been detained for questioning in the attack.

U.S. intelligence analysts are skeptical that al-Qaeda has penetrated Pakistan’s armed forces. “There’s not likely to be an organized al-Qaeda cell within the Pakistan navy,” a U.S. official said.

But U.S. officials said that there is a long-standing concern over the presence of Islamist militants — what one official referred to as “onesies and twosies” — among Pakistan’s military branches. Pakistan’s leaders privately share this concern, U.S. officials said.

On the radar

Shahzad, the author of a new book on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, was considered well connected to both the military establishment and militant groups. He persisted though the ISI had warned him several times about articles it “deemed detrimental to Pakistan’s national interests or image,” according to Asia Times Online.

In October, Shahzad told Human Rights Watch, the ISI summoned him over an article that said Pakistan had released Abdul Ghani Baradar, an Afghan Taliban commander arrested in Karachi in early 2010, so that he could play a part in reconciliation talks in Afghanistan. An ISI official asked Shahzad to identify his source and write a denial; Shahzad said he declined, allowing only that the story was leaked by intelligence and confirmed by “the most credible” Taliban source.

Then, Shahzad said, the official added what he called a “favor,” telling him that a militant had recently been arrested.

“The terrorist had a hit list with him,” the ISI official said, according to Shahzad’s written account. “If I find your name on the list I will certainly let you know.”

Shahzad disappeared Sunday evening as he drove through a genteel sector of Islamabad on the way to an interview at a television station. Before his body was found, Human Rights Watch said “credible sources” said they thought that he had been abducted by intelligence agents but that the sources indicated Shahzad would be released. Instead, police announced Tuesday that his body had been found, and photos aired on television indicated he had been beaten.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani condemned the killing and ordered an investigation.

Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan representative for Human Rights Watch, said it would have been difficult for anyone unaffiliated with the security agencies to abduct a man and his car from Islamabad, a city riddled with police checkpoints.

More important, he and journalists said, Shahzad’s disappearance and treatment bore the hallmarks of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies — a topic few here are willing to discuss openly. Politicians whisper about being harassed and spied on. Nationalist activists in the province of Ba*luchistan, whom the security establishment views as insurgents, are regularly abducted or killed.

In April, the main opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, sharply criticized the spy agencies and vowed to bring evidence about their extralegal activities to Parliament. In a recent interview, however, opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said it would not be “appropriate” to detail those allegations until the government asked for them, which it has not.

“There should not be states within states. There should not be parallel policies being run by intelligence agencies,” he said.

Of the intelligence services, a Pakistani government official said: “They have two purposes in life: one is keeping control at home, and the other is the five letters,” a reference to the Pakistani military’s main foe, India.

Inhibiting newsgathering
In a nation where the big story is Islamist insurgency and the military’s fight against it, local journalists regularly receive threats from both sides, Hasan said. As a result, few journalists among Pakistan’s boisterous press corps are willing to openly criticize the military.

“It is becoming very dangerous indeed for journalists to perform their professional duties,” Hasan said.

Pakistan was the world’s most dangerous place for journalists in 2010, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which said eight reporters were killed, most of them in militant attacks. Other journalists were abducted, including Umar Cheema, an investigative reporter for the News, an English-language daily.

Cheema, who has written several articles scrutinizing the army, says he was kidnapped from Islamabad and beaten for six hours. He has since spoken out about his ordeal, which he said he has determined was carried out by the ISI. In an interview, Cheema said he harbored doubts that the agency would go so far as to kill Shahzad. Nevertheless, he said, he and his colleagues feel more vulnerable.

“It’s a very strong message to the journalist community,” Cheema said. “If the ISI is not involved, they should come up with some evidence who has done it. Just denying it won’t work. It won’t remove the suspicions of the people.”

Staff writer Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

ISLAMABAD: Speculation that the ISI had a hand in the death of prominent journalist Saleem Shahzad has further discredited the organisation already facing one of its worst crises after the killing of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.

Saleem Shahzad, who worked for Hong-Kong based Asia Times Online and Italian news agency Adnkronos International, disappeared from Islamabad on Sunday and his body was found in a canal with what police said were torture marks.

Suspicions immediately fell on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, bringing more bad publicity after the killing of bin Laden by US special forces near the capital.

The raid, which Pakistan failed to detect or stop, shattered the myth that the agency is omnipotent.

“The ISI’s image had already been tarnished and it is under so much pressure,” said a former ISI officer.

“It’s never been as bad as this before.”

Shahzad was investigating suspected links between the military and al Qaeda. Human Rights Watch said Shahzad, a 40-year-old father of three, had voiced concerns about his safety after receiving threatening telephone calls from the ISI and was under surveillance since 2010.

ISI officials were not available for comment.

Analysts have not ruled out the possibility that he may have been killed by militants. Shahzad often wrote about al Qaeda and other groups.
‘Pushed to the wall’

Reporters say Shahzad’s death raises troubling questions about freedoms in Pakistan, which receives billions in aid from ally Washington and describes itself is a democracy.

“It means we are being pushed to the wall and losing space to tyranny if the ISI carried this out,” said Umar Cheema, a journalist who knows all about the risks of investigating Pakistan’s security establishment.

Last year, he was picked up by suspected intelligence agents, driven to an unknown location, stripped naked and whipped with leather and a wooden rod, he said.

“Pakistan is my beloved country. But nobody is safe in Pakistan. I live in what I call self-imposed house arrest because I am scared to go out,” said Cheema.

Shahzad was killed after he wrote a story that claimed al Qaeda attacked a naval base in Karachi last month after negotiations with the military to release two naval officials accused of militant links broke down.

That assault further humiliated the Pakistani military. Some believe that with its loss of credibility after the Bin Laden fiasco, and the naval base siege, the ISI may come under more public scrutiny for its apparent failure to tackle militancy and ease suicide bombings.

“Fewer people believe that the ISI is this powerful agency. People will start asking tougher questions,” said Rifaat Hussain, head of the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

“They may be more willing to ask why the ISI is tapping the telephones of the opposition when it should be providing more security for the country.”
But equally likely is that journalists will think twice about writing hard-hitting stories after Shahzad’s death.

Others have died in similar circumstances in Pakistan, the world’s most dangerous country for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders.

“It is a death. The death of expression,” said Matiullah Jan, a correspondent with Dawn News television. “There is an apprehension in certain quarters that it’s meant to send a shut-up message.”

ISI faces more heat after journalist’s killing – The Express Tribune

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ASIF AMIN