Shahbaz Taseer freed at last

Kidnapped son of slain Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer recovered in Quetta raid

QUETTA:

Assassinated Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer’s son was recovered by security forces and intelligence sleuths from suburban Quetta Tuesday evening, nearly five years after he was seized by gunmen from a posh neighourhood of Lahore.

“Shahbaz Taseer has been freed,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told lawmakers in the upper house of parliament. “I have just received the information,” he said, but did not say how he was recovered.



The Frontier Corps said Shahbaz was freed in a joint operation by paramilitary troops and intelligence agents from Al Saleem hotel in Kuchlak area. It was an intelligence-based operation which did not yield any arrest, and there was no confrontation with the captors either, said FC spokesperson Khan Wassey.

“We didn’t find anyone [in the hotel]. A single person was there and he told us, ‘my name is Shahbaz and my father’s name is Salmaan Taseer’,” Aitzaz Goraya, the head of the Counter-Terrorism Department of Balochistan, told the media. “He is in feeble health.”

According to provincial government’s spokesperson Anwarul Haq Kakar, the raid was carried out between 4 to 5pm in Kuchlak, 25 kilometres north of Quetta. “Shahbaz Taseer is in safe hands now,” Kakar said. “He has spoken to his family by phone. We are making arrangements to send him to his home in Lahore.”

Shahbaz’s recovery came just over a week after his father’s self-confessed assassin Mumtaz Qadri was hanged in a Rawalpindi jail. At the time, Shabaz’s brother Shehryar wrote on popular microblogging website Twitter that Qadri’s hanging was a victory for Pakistan, but not his family. “The safe return of my brother is the only victory my family wants,” he wrote.

Shahbaz was abducted at gunpoint from the Gulberg area of Lahore on August 26, 2011, months after his father was assassinated by Qadri for opposing the blasphemy laws. The silver Mercedes Kompressor (LZT-1) Shahbaz was driving was intercepted by an SUV and a motorcycle on MM Alam Road, hardly 600 yards away from his office. Gunmen dragged him out of the jeep and took him away.



He was reportedly driven by his kidnappers to the Waziristan tribal region where Taliban militants and their foreign cohorts held sway. The family oscillated between hope and fear amid disturbing media reports. At one point some media outlets reported that Shahbaz was killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan Agency. Then reports emerged that the captors wanted to swap him with Qadri and some militants.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the banned umbrella of militant groups, has never officially confirmed its involvement in the kidnapping, but a militant source told AFP on Tuesday that Operation Zarb-e-Azb had made it ‘difficult’ for the group to keep him. “That’s why they preferred to set him free,” the source added. A second militant source said the TTP had been demanding up to Rs2 billion for Shahbaz’s release.

Security analyst Imtiaz Gul said it was possible a ransom had been paid and that Shahbaz had been abandoned by his abductors once they received the money. The TTP “is a group of mercenaries with clear links to organised crime”, he added.

Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri appreciated the security forces for the successful raid. “Shahbaz Taseer’s safe recovery has proved that our security forces are determined to wipe out terrorism.”



Former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, whose own son Ali Haider Gilani was also kidnapped by militants in May 2013, said: “It is a very big day for the Taseer family.” He added: “After this release, I am very hopeful that my own son will be freed.”

Gilani said the Taliban had conveyed him that they had abducted his son to avenge the military operation in Swat under the previous PPP government.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 9^th, 2016.