The work of Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times Online has appeared many times here at Jihad Watch. You can see here that he was closely monitoring jihad activity in Pakistan — and given their preference for working under the cover of darkness, it is only natural that they would want him dead.
“Missing Pakistani journalist found dead in Punjab,” from AP, May 31 (thanks to Jaladhi):
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani journalist who investigated al-Qaida’s alleged infiltration of the country’s navy was found dead on Tuesday, and police said there were signs he’d been tortured.
The journalist, Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times Online, had been missing for two days. He had told a rights activist in recent months that he feared the country’s intelligence agencies planned to retaliate against him over some of his reporting. Shahzad’s stories on the alleged infiltration followed a deadly 18-hour militant siege of a naval base earlier last week in Karachi….
Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan said that the 40-year-old Shahzad had told him he feared that the spy agencies were after him, and that he had received a veiled threat in a meeting with a navy officer at the headquarters of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency in October.
Shahzad forwarded notes from that meeting to Hasan, saying in an email that it was for the “record only if in case something happens to me or my family in future.” The rights activist also said he was told by some Pakistani government officials that they believed Shahzad was in ISI custody.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official denied allegations that the agency had anything to do with Shahzad’s case.
“It’s absurd,” the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media on the record….
It is not in the least absurd. The ISI is linked to the Mumbai jihad attacks, and to other jihad activity. Why wouldn’t it take out a journalist who got too close to things they didn’t want known?
The Committee to Protect Journalists says that Pakistan was the deadliest country for journalists in 2010, with at least eight media workers killed in the line of duty. Six of the journalists in Pakistan were killed in suicide attacks, the group said.
The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists strongly condemned Shahzad’s killing, and demanded a high-level investigation.
“This is tragic,” said Amin Yousuf, secretary-general of the union. “We are losing our professional colleagues but the government never unearths who is behind the killing of journalists.”
Gee, I wonder why.