Executed aid worker: Red Cross was in ‘contact’ with kidnappers

ICRC says it will review its operations in Pakistan.

LONDON: As British Premier David Cameron paid tribute to Dr Khalil Rasped Dale, an aid worker slain in Pakistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed on Monday it had been in contact with his kidnappers.

Sean Maguire, the humanitarian organisation’s spokesman in Britain, refused to say whether the captors had demanded a ransom for Dr Dale, who was abducted in January in Quetta.

Sixty-year-old Dale’s body was found in Quetta on Sunday. “It is inappropriate to go into the details of any contact we might have had with the abductors,” Maguire told BBC radio. “We said that we had some contact with the abductors but we would not want to give succour to future kidnappers by saying yes, we countenanced paying a ransom.

Maguire mentioned that the ICRC was in ‘horror’ and would now review its operations in Pakistan. “His death, in our mind, is senseless and barbaric,” he stated. “We will take stock and review what we should be doing and what the risk-benefit balance is of operating in different parts of Pakistan.”

ICRC has also appealed to the Pakistani media not to broadcast a video of the execution of Dale, which his killers threatened to release.

Cameron saddened

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday paid tribute to Dr Dale, calling his murder a “shocking and merciless act.”

Cameron said he “was deeply saddened” to hear about the death of Dr Dale, and accused the attackers of having “no respect for human life and the rule of law.” “This was a shocking and merciless act,” he added.

(With additional reporting from British website The Guardian)

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2012.