Taliban want Polish engineer’s body swapped

Source: The News

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Seek release of 4-5 militants in government custody

PESHAWAR: The Taliban in Darra Adamkhel are still refusing to hand over the body of the slain Polish engineer, Petr Stanczak, to the authorities and are insisting that some of their colleagues should be released to close an exchange deal.

A jirga led by former MMA MNA from Karak Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz has been seeking return of the Polish engineer’s body but its efforts until now have proved fruitless. When contacted by The News, he said he was planning to once again take a jirga to the tribal area to contact the commanders of Taliban from Darra Adamkhel who had kidnapped and later killed the engineer from Poland to request them to return his body. He felt he would be ready to undertake the trip, probably to Orakzai Agency, to seek a meeting with the Darra Taliban commanders. Taliban had kidnapped the Polish engineer from Attock district late last year and demanded freedom for their men in exchange for his release. They later announced that the kidnapped engineer had been killed following non-acceptance of their demand by the Pakistan government.

According to Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz, the Darra Taliban initially demanded release of 60 of their colleagues but later whittled down the list to four or five militants belonging to Darra Adamkhel. He said the Darra Taliban also dropped one of their original demands for withdrawal of Polish troops from Afghanistan.

It is probably the first time that a group of militants is trying to trade the body of a kidnapped person to seek release of its men. The killing of the Polish engineers caused anger in Poland and established the reputation of the Taliban from Darra Adamkhel as the most intolerant and radical group of militants in Pakistan.