JUSTICE
DELAYED Commission fails to find Shahzad’s
killers By Amir Mir
ISLAMABAD - The high-level judicial
inquiry commission constituted by the government
to investigate the alleged involvement of
Pakistan's powerful security and intelligence
establishment in the May 2011 murder of Syed
Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia
Times Online, has failed to hold any institution
or individual responsible for his abduction,
torture and murder.
According to Shahzad's
friends and colleagues, some senior
officials of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had warned the
journalist thrice prior to his abduction and
subsequent assassination that he was under threat.
The commission, headed by Justice Mian
Saqib Nisar of the Lahore High Court, was
constituted on June 21, 2011, to investigate the
murder. Despite initially being given six weeks to
complete its task, the commission took six months
to finalize the inquiry report, which has no
findings at all.
The Editor of Asia Times
Online, Tony Allison, commented, "This confirms
our worst fears soon after Saleem was killed, that
while all sorts of placatory noises would be made,
in the end, nothing would be done. At the time we
wrote in an editorial:
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari
has expressed deep grief and sorrow over the
kidnapping and murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad,
Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief, and
ordered an immediate inquiry. The president
stressed that his government firmly believes in
freedom of the media and the promotion of
democratic values.
These are honorable
and noble sentiments that will resonate around
the world. The trouble is, like an echo, the
words will quickly fade, and most likely nothing
will be done. It will be business as usual in a
country that had the most journalist deaths in
the world in 2010 - 44 - and four prominent
newsmen killed this year [2011] for simply doing
their job. (See Justice,
not words Asia Times Online, June 2, 2011.)
Talking to newsmen outside parliament
in Islamabad on January 12, Federal Minister for
Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdaus Ashiq Awan
said that according to the report, Shahzad's
killers could not be traced, but police and
law-enforcement agencies had been directed to
continue investigating the case.
According
to 140-page report, which was submitted to Prime
Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on January 12 (but has
yet to be made public), the commission could not
find evidence of involvement of any security
agency, including the ISI, in the killing of
Shahzad.
Moreover, none of the journalists
interviewed by the commission gave any evidence or
shared information about the involvement of any
security agency. The commission held about 23
meetings besides probing certain aspects in the
course of the inquiry. This included calling for
evidence through public notices in the media and
examining a large number of witnesses, mostly
journalists in Islamabad and Karachi, where
Shahzad was most active. The commission also
invited suggestions from various personalities
familiar with the environment in which Shahzad
worked.
The report did blame "various
belligerents" involved in the "war on terror" for
Shahzad's murder, but it didn't single out any one
person or organization that might have killed him,
leaving the door open for further investigation.
As per the executive summary of the
report, parts of which have been published by
sections of the Pakistani media:
Saleem's writings probably did, and
certainly could have drawn the ire of various
belligerents in the war on terror which included
the Pakistani state and non-state actors such as
the Taliban and al-Qaeda and foreign actors.
Any of these could have had the motive
to commit the crime, as clearly he was also in
close contact with all of these. The incident
[of his killing] may also have been linked, as
asserted by some of the witnesses examined, to
the subsequent drone attack on [al-Qaeda linked
Waziristan-based Pakistani militant] Commander
Ilyas Kashmiri.
The New
Yorker magazine claimed in its September 11, 2011,
issue that "the order to kill Pakistani
investigative journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad came
from a senior officer on Pakistan Army Chief
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's staff".
Authored by Dexter Filkins, the report
stated that Shahzad had angered Pakistani
authorities by writing about al-Qaeda infiltrating
the Pakistan navy at a particularly sensitive time
as the country's leaders were reeling from the
humiliation of the May 2 raid by United States
special forces that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden inside Pakistan. (To read Shahzad's
report on the navy, see Al-Qaeda
had warned of Pakistan strike Asia Times
Online, May 27, 2011.)
While exploring
Shahzad's Kashmiri link, The New Yorker report
stated that the militant was killed in Pakistan's
largely lawless tribal region only four days after
Shahzad's body was discovered in a canal in Mandi
Bahauddin, about 150 kilometers southeast of
Islamabad.
"Given the brief time that
passed between Saleem Shahzad's death and
Kashmiri's, a question inevitably arose: Did the
Americans find Kashmiri on their own?" Filkins
asks. "Or did they benefit from information
obtained by the ISI during its detention of Saleem
Shahzad? If so, Saleem Shahzad's death would be
not just a terrible example of Pakistani state
brutality; it would be a terrible example of the
collateral damage sustained in America's war on
terror."
Filkins added in his report that
Shahzad's cell-phone records revealed more than
258 calls in one month to and from a single number
that may have been Kashmiri's.
However,
the judicial commission stated that it had been
unable to identify the culprits despite seeking
substantial evidence/tangible material, direct or
circumstantial, which would allow it to single out
the culprits.
"Such evidence has not
surfaced," it said.
However, it
recommended that the more important agencies (the
ISI and the Intelligence Bureau) be made more
law-abiding through legislation, carefully outline
their respective mandates and role; that their
interaction with the media be carefully
streamlined institutionally and regularly
documented.
Similarly, the report further
suggested that all the intelligence agencies
should be made more accountable at three levels:
within the agency and before the
minister-in-charge, ie through internal
administrative review; through a parliamentary
committee responsible for oversight over their
affairs; and through a suitably tailored judicial
forum for redressal of grievances against them.
The commission also urged the media to
maintain a balance between secrecy and
accountability in the conduct of
information-gathering that should be appropriately
readjusted, with the aim of restoring public
confidence in all institutions of the state.
"Islamabad and Punjab Police should
continue to investigate the matter diligently,
impartially without any fear or favor by
interrogating all those (whosoever) who should in
the normal course be interrogated in the present
incident," it further added.
The
commission asked the competent authority to ensure
immediate disbursement of 3,000,000 rupees
(US$33,000) announced by President Asif Ali
Zardari as compensation to the widow of Shahzad
(Anita) besides providing free education to his
three children at least until their graduation.
Courageous to the death Syed
Saleem Shahzad (November 3, 1970- May 30, 2011)
was the Pakistan Bureau Chief for the Hong
Kong-based Asia Times Online and also wrote for
the Italian news agency Adnkronos.
He went
missing on May 29, just two days after his article
titled "Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistani strike"
was published, stating that al-Qaeda was engaged
in negotiations with the Pakistan navy for the
release of naval personnel incarcerated for
alleged links to the terror outfit.
Shahzad's report said that the navy had
agreed to free the under-detention officers only
on the completion of their interrogation, a term
al-Qaeda rejected. Shahzad's story further claimed
that the audacious fidayeen (suicide)
attack on the Mehran naval base in Karachi on May
22 was actually an outcome of the breakdown in the
navy-al-Qaeda negotiations, thereby testifying to
the militant-military nexus.
The mutilated
body of the abducted journalist was found in a
canal on May 31 near the Head Rasul area in Mandi
Bahauddin, about 150 km from Islamabad - two days
after he was kidnapped in Islamabad - showing
signs of severe torture and broken ribs.
Shahzad's post-mortem report, prepared by
a team of three doctors, found the journalist died
soon after he was kidnapped. Dr Farrukh Kamal, who
headed the autopsy team, said, "There were at
least 17 wounds, including deep gashes ... The
ribs from the left and right sides seemed to have
been hit with violent force, using a blunt object.
The broken ribs pierced Shahzad's lungs,
apparently causing the death."
The
pertinent question is: who tortured Shahzad, not
who killed him? Some close aides of the slain
journalist subsequently accused the dreaded
intelligence establishment, the ISI of involvement
in the murder, saying Shahzad had been tortured to
extract the sources of his article. However, the
ISI issued a statement denying the allegation.
But the Pakistan representative of Human
Rights Watch (HRW), Ali Dayan Hasan, immediately
came forward with a claim that Shahzad had been
detained by the ISI.
What really had
tongues wagging against the ISI was his other
disclosure - on October 17, 2010, that he had been
summoned to the Islamabad headquarters of the ISI
by the Information Management Wing of the spy
agency, which wanted to discuss his recent report
in which he claimed that the Pakistani authorities
had quietly released the fugitive amir of
Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar's right-hand
man, Mullah Baradar, to take part in Afghan peace
negotiations through the Pakistani military
establishment.
Present at the Rawalpindi
headquarters of the ISI were just two navy
officers who politely requested Shahzad to name
the sources of his story or at least write a
denial of the same.
When Shahzad refused,
one of the officials informed him about a hit-list
obtained from a detained terrorist and added, "If
I find your name on the list, I will certainly let
you know." Interpreting this as a threat, Shahzad
thought it prudent to tell the HRW representative
- as well as Asia Times Online Editor Allison -
about the meeting in an e-mail on October 18,
2010.
In a subsequent statement, the ISI
justified summoning Shahzad in these words:
The reported meeting between the
journalist and the ISI officials of the
Information Management Wing was held to discuss
a story he had done for Asia Times Online on
15th October 2011, and the meeting had nothing
sinister about it. It is part of the Wing's
mandate to remain in touch with the journalist
community. The main objective behind all such
interactions is provision of accurate
information on matters of national security. ISI
also makes it a point to notify institutions and
individuals alike of any threat warning received
about them.
The Pakistani press has
reacted sharply over the failure of the judicial
commission to unmask the killers of Shahzad.
A leading English newspaper, the Daily
Times, stated in its January 13 editorial titled
"Blind Commission" that business as usual was
basically what the commission was about.
It seems that Saleem Shahzad
committed self-torture and suicide and later his
dead body drove a car to the canal and dumped
itself there. The judicial commission has made a
mockery of justice. It is crystal clear that the
judiciary lacks the courage to question the ISI
for its alleged extra-judicial murders and other
illegal activities.
It is indeed a sad
day. Journalists, human-rights activists and
citizens of Pakistan had high hopes from this
judicial commission that at last someone would
rein in the ISI, which considers itself above
the law and that their basic right of freedom of
expression as enshrined in the constitution
would be protected.
Justice indeed
remains delayed.
Amir Mir is a
senior Pakistani journalist and the author of
several books on the subject of militant Islam and
terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder
trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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