Baloch missing persons: Body of Baloch activist, three others recovered

Activists raise concerns over lack of international attention.

QUETTA:

The mystery of four more Baloch missing persons came to a brutal end on Saturday when their bodies were found in Quetta. An activist of the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-Azad) was among the murdered.

Police found three bodies packed in separate sacks in a suburb of Quetta, Jabal-e-Noor. The bodies were taken to the Bolan Medical College Hospital. The identities of the bodies were determined through slips recovered from each sack. They were identified as Maqsood an activist of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad), Ghulam Murtaza and Nasir Badni.

Police recovered another dead body from the Qambarani Road of Quetta, identified later as Abdul Khalil Baloch who went missing a month ago.

According to a police official, the killers had written on slips of paper attached to their bodies that the victims were agents of the banned outfit, the Baloch Liberation Army. Doctors said the bodies bore multiple marks of torture.

According to a BSO-Azad spokesperson, Maqsood was whisked away by security personnel during a search operation in Khuzdar a few months ago. Many people abducted during the operation are still missing, he claimed.

The chairperson of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, Nasrullah Baloch said all the four victims were on the list of missing persons and their relatives had previously held press conferences in Quetta and Islamabad calling for their safe recovery.

“We have evidence and eyewitnesses that they were picked up and ultimately killed by state functionaries in official custody,” he added.

Nasrullah Baloch said the organisation had conveyed their concerns to the chief justice but to no avail. Meanwhile, a complete shutter down strike was observed in Kech district for the second consecutive day on Saturday to condemn the recovery of bullet riddled bodies.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2011.