Islamabad, June 2 (IANS) The abduction and murder of journalist Saleem Shahzad should not be used to malign Pakistan’s security agencies, said an unnamed Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official.
Clearly embarrassed by disclosures that two ISI officials had used threatening language against Shahzad, the unnamed official said it was the agency’s ‘mandate to remain in touch with the journalist community’.
The official Associated Press of Pakistan quoted the ISI official as saying that Shahzad’s death was a source of concern for the entire nation.
The official admitted that ISI, which is known to function as a state within a state, did summon Shahzad, who wrote extensively on Islamists, on Oct 17, 2010.
‘(A) meeting was held … to discuss a story he had done for Asia Online on Oct 15 and the meeting had nothing sinister about it,’ the official said.
‘It is part of the (ISI’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,’ he was quoted as saying.
The ISI official said ‘the reported e-mail of Shahzad to Ali Hasan Dayan of HRW (Human Rights Watch) which is being made the basis of baseless allegations levelled against ISI has no veiled or unveiled threats in it’.
The reference was to Shahzad’s email to Asia Online that one ISI official told him after he refused to take back a story he had written that a militant had been arrested and a hit list recovered from him, and that if his (Shahzad’s) name figured in it, he would be told about it.
The 40-year-old journalist, who worked for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online, had taken the ISI official’s statement as a threat.
The ISI official quoted by APP said that Shahzad had himself said that ‘the conversation was held in an extremely polite and friendly atmosphere and there was no mince word in the room at any stage’.
Yet, the official added, it was ‘regrettable’ that sections of the media were using the killing of Shahzad to target and malign the ISI.
The ‘ISI offers its deepest and heartfelt condolence to the bereaved family and assures them that it will leave no stone unturned in helping to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice’, he stated.
Shahzad was kidnapped in Islamabad Sunday and his tortured body was found in a canal in Punjab province Tuesday. The killing has caused widespread revulsion in Pakistan.
He is widely believed to have been seized by intelligence officials for alleging that terrorists attacked a key naval base in Karachi May 22 after the navy refused to free sailors held for suspected militant links.
