PESHAWAR: The widow of murdered tribal journalist, Hayatullah Khan, has alleged that her husband was “trapped” by the country’s secret services.
“One intelligence agent called Hayatullah to file a story and gave him the pictures of a Hellfire missile used to attack a compound in the tribal areas to expose the US atrocities against Muslims,” Mehrunisa, Hayatullah’s widow, said while talking to the BBC Pushto Service.
Hayatullah’s body was found on June 16 after he went missing on December 5, 2005. “He was called by secret service agents in the evening on December 2, 2005 asking him to write a story regarding the attack. More than 20 phone calls were made to my husband,” she said in her first interview since the gruesome murder of the 29-year-old tribal journalist.
Mehrunnisa said that she had told Hayatullah that intelligence agents were his “enemy” but Hayatullah did not “listen to me”.She said, “I know the names of secret agents who are involved in kidnapping Hayatullah”. However, she refused to disclose the names.
Mehrunnisa, who is a school teacher in Mir Ali in North Waziristan, said that both Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and President Pervez Musharraf know who kidnapped and killed Hayatullah. “What is the purpose of holding an inquiry when you know everything,” she said.
She also vowed to bring Hayatullah’s killers to justice and quoted her husband as saying, “If I die, I will be a martyr and if I return I will be hero”. Meanwhile, international media rights group, Reporters Without Borders, urged Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to accept the demands of journalists following the murder of kidnapped reporter Hayatullah.
“We support the call for an independent head of the investigative commission and that it should include at least one journalist, to uncover the truth about the abduction and death of Hayatullah,” the organisation said on Monday in a statement issued in Paris. “If this murder goes unpunished, all journalists will consider the state as an enemy of investigative reporters,” the statement said. The statement said that another Pakistani journalist, Munir Mengal, head of the Baloch-language TV channel Baloch Voice, was abducted from the Karachi International Airport on April 7 by intelligence personnel. “The fate of Hayatullah Khan makes us fear for the life of Munir Mengal and we call for his immediate release,” the organisation said.
