Bargaining chip: Abductions planned to free Bin Laden family
Bin Laden’s wives and several of his children are being held by authorities in Pakistan.
“Intelligence agencies have issued an alert that the TTP have plans to kidnap top people in Pakistan,” Malik told Reuters. It was not possible to immediately verify the report.
“They are planning to use (hostages) as bargaining chips to demand the release of members of Osama’s family in exchange.”
Bin Laden’s relatives were detained after US forces killed him in a raid in Abbottabad on May 2. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry had said Bin Laden’s wives, one from Yemen and two from Saudi Arabia, would be repatriated, but a government-appointed commission investigating Bin Laden’s killing prevented repatriation.
The Pakistani Taliban has staged several suicide bombings in Pakistan to avenge Bin Laden’s death.
They have demonstrated ability to carry out high-profile attacks, including a raid on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009 in which the Taliban took more than 40 people hostage.
Bin Laden’s youngest wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told Pakistani investigators in May that she and her family lived for five years in a compound in Abbottabad.
Malik said security had been beefed up after the Taliban kidnap threat.
The TTP is holding more than 20 young tribesmen hostage in an area straddling the border with Afghanistan and have demanded the release of scores of prisoners and an end to tribal elders’ support of offensives against them.
The teenage tribesmen from Pakistan’s northwestern Bajaur tribal region were abducted by the militants on August 31 while on an outing in Afghanistan’s border province of Kunar.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2011.
COMMENTS (7)
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They need new ideas. Nobody wants to be seen submitting or negotiating with terrorists. Especially when it's a high profile target which, sad to say, will likely get a lot more attention than someone else. You're supposed to keep blackmailing on the quiet side. Though they do like publicity and never actually have had any tact. Suicide bombing doesn't require it beyond the manipulation point since it's "find a group of people and it a button."
There is one thing, for the most part, blackmailing incidents have in common. It becomes less and less effective as the number increases. Have it hit the media and it's game over. You want exchanges to be quick and under the table or you're going to have interference.
What's the urdu word for futility?
Take the warning sereously .Take the warning sereously .
Have them tagged first and only then release them, so that if they return to a terrorist sanctuary their whereabouts will be known.
Since Osama was never in Pakistan in the first place, where is the question of releasing his relatives ?
-- Zaid Hamid
Wonder if Mr. Malik is high profile and top official or not ?
If they have not committed any crime then why hold them. Let them go. Why should they pay the price for Bin Laden's crime.