Islamabad - Security forces in Pakistan have killed the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping and murder of a Canadian woman journalist.
Law enforcement agents conducting a joint intelligence-based operation on Tuesday night in a hilly area of the Bannu District, in Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killed Amin Shah in an exchange of gunfire after he refused to surrender, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police Inspector General Sanaullah Abbasi said.
Seven other terrorists were also reportedly killed.
Bannu is located about 190 miles north of the federal capital Islamabad, and borders North Waziristan tribal region.
Shah, a senior figure in the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan group, which is sometimes called the Pakistani Taliban, allegedly kidnapped Beverly Anne Giesbrecht in 2008 and demanded $2 million in ransom. Her corpse was found in North Waziristan two years later.
Giesbrecht was born in Vancouver in 1953 and was the owner and publisher of a Canada-based website called Jihad Unspun, which was seen as sympathetic to the Taliban. According to reports, she had converted to Islam and adopted the name Khadija Abdul Qahaar after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States.
She was en route to an unknown destination in the Miranshah area of North Waziristan when she disappeared.
Kidnapped along with Giesbrecht was her translator, Salman Khan, and her driver, Zar Muhammad. Both were released a few months later.
Yasir Afridi, a Bannu District police officer, told The Media Line that Amin was also wanted for the murder of a former Bannu police chief, Iqbal Marwat, and a police inspector, Imam Hassan Khan.
“Amin Shah was a prime suspect in scores of heinous terrorist activities against the security forces and the public,” Afridi said, adding that undercover sources reported his whereabouts, along with others, this week.
“Police and the counter-terrorism squad, led by senior police officers, responded quickly and cordoned off the militants’ hideout,” he stated. “The militants started indiscriminate firing on law enforcement officials. Police retaliated and Amin Shah was killed along with [the rest] on the spot.”
Some intelligence officials believe Giesbrecht was trying to meet with Baitullah Mehsud, founder of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, when she was kidnapped. Mehsud was later killed in a US drone attack.
Miranshah is a rugged, mountainous region famous as a haven for terrorists. Pakistan’s military has conducted a wide range of clearance operations there.
Arbab Khan Wazir, a Peshawar-based former intelligence chief, told The Media Line that the dead journalist was apparently on assignment for Al Jazeera.
“Beverly Giesbrecht had a cover letter from Al Jazeera, the channel based in Doha, which specified that [she] was on a documentary assignment…. She was repeatedly warned about the security situation but she ignored our warnings,” Wazir said.
“Intelligence reports suggested that [Giesbrecht] was influenced by the ideology of extremist organizations including al-Qaida and the Taliban, and therefore she traveled into North Waziristan, the stronghold of terrorists in those days,” he continued.
He described her as being “obsessed” with interviewing terrorist leaders.
“In 2009, a video was sent to the Miranshah press club which showed [her] pleading for her life, saying her captors would kill her if their demands were not met,” he added. “[She was] wearing a headscarf and sitting on a wooden chair. In the video, Beverly also said that she was being held by the Taliban near the Afghan border, either in Pakistan or in Afghanistan.”
Adil Farouq, an Islamabad-based security analyst and a retired major in the Pakistani military, told The Media Line that counter-insurgency operations of the type that led to Shah’s death this week are “based on intelligence acquired through years of efforts in uncertain environments” where terrorists using aliases intermingle with local residents.
“It is not an open battlefield scenario anymore, but rather a murky situation where identifying friend and foe remains a cumbersome process in a densely populated area,” he explained.
“The Pakistani security forces are practically writing the book for counter-insurgency operations in the information age,” Farouq said. “It’s an evolving process.”