Bureau Recommends: Dangers faced by Pakistan’s journalists
An investigation by the New Yorker into the torture and murder of campaigning Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, reveals the dangers faced by reporters who challenge Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies.
The article also offers dark circumstantial evidence that the CIA may have used information obtained during his torture to help carry out its drone war.
Shahzad’s body was discovered washed up against the intake grates of a dam in eastern Pakistan on 30 May.
An autopsy revealed he had suffered a slow death from catastrophic internal injuries after his ribs had been smashed on both sides by a blunt instrument.
The New Yorker reports that Shahzad was known for his exposés of the Pakistani military and in the weeks before his death had published another of a series of articles exposing links between Islamist militants and Pakistan’s armed forces.
The article goes on to describe state abuses against other journalists, including the kidnap, torture and sexual humiliation of Umar Cheema, a reporter who also has published numerous articles on the military’s failures.
But the final paragraphs of the New Yorker article also suggest a US drone attack that killed Ilyas Kashmiri, a known terrorist, may have benefited from information gained through Shahzad’s torture.
According to the article, Shahzad had once proved that Kashmiri was alive, contradicting official Pakistani intelligence information. Shortly after Shahzad’s body was found, a CIA drone attack successfully targeted and killed Kashmiri.
The New Yorker writes: “Given the brief time that passed between Shahzad’s death and Kashmiri’s, a question inevitably arose: Did the Americans find Kashmiri on their own? Or did they benefit from information obtained by the I.S.I. [Pakistan’s intelligence agency] during its detention of Shahzad? If so, 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.”
