Reporter who exposed Pak Navy men's link with al-Qaida killed

A well-known Pakistani investigative reporter who had complained of threats from the country's Inter-Services Intelligence was found dead on Tuesday, two days after he disappeared following the publication of his articles that exposed links between Pakistan navy personnel and al-Qaida operatives.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, 40, the Pakistan bureau chief for Asia Times Online, was found dead in Punjab province about 200km from Islamabad. His body, fished out of a canal, was identified by his brother-in-law Hamza Amir. It bore marks of torture, police said, one officer adding that he had cuts on his face.

He is survived by his widow Anila, and sons — Fahad (14), Syed Rehman (8) — and daughter Amina (12).

Soon after Shahzad went missing on Sunday evening while on the way to a TV station from his Islamabad home, a representative of Pakistan's Human Rights Watch, Ali Dayan Hasan, told the Daily Times of Pakistan that "credible sources" claimed Shahzad was apprehended by the ISI. Members of Shahzad's family told the editor of Asia Times that many of Shahzad's friends believed him to be in ISI custody and that he was "safe and would be released after 48 hours".

"He told us that if anything happened to him, we should inform the media about the situation and the threats," Hasan said.

Shahzad had on several occasions been warned by ISI officers over his reports they considered "detrimental to Pakistan's national interest".

His last report on May 29 gave details of contacts between the Pakistan navy and al-Qaida operatives and how the terror group had infiltrated the Mehran base in Karachi and helped organize the devastating attack on May 22.

Police said Shahzad's body was found near his white Toyota Corolla car at Sarai Alamghir near Jhelum town. After police informed Shahzad's family, a relative went to the site and identified the body. Shahzad's family had earlier told the media that the description provided by police did not match with that of the missing journalist, which initially led to hope that he might be alive.

While scores of angry and shocked journalists gathered at his Islamabad home to pay their last respects, there was no word from the government or the army on the killing and neither did any authority visit his home. Pakistani journalists have planned a rally in Islamabad on Wednesday to protest the killing of Shahzad.

Osama’s Yemeni wife led US to Abbottabad?

Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik believes US had a mole right inside Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout and this was how the al-Qaida chief was tracked down, a media report said on Sunday.

Top US officials said after the raid that they were only partially certain of Osama's presence inside the $1 million mansion, but Malik says only definitive information could have led them right to the room where bin Laden was killed, according to a report in The Sunday Times. The report also says that bin Laden's Saudi wives believe it was his younger Yemeni wife Amal who betrayed him.

"In my experience of years as an intelligence officer, I think someone from inside may have given information," said Malik. "If the Americans didn't have definitive information, they couldn't have gone straight to the room where bin Laden was," he was quoted as saying by the paper.

A pocket guide carried by the US Navy Seals who killed Osama, suggests "bin Laden had fathered twins in captivity" referring to the unidentified children born this year to his youngest wife Amal, 28.

The document, left behind in the compound, lists the names and ages of those who were present, including bin Laden's wives, children and grandchildren. It also details where they lived in the compound and when they arrived.

According to the report, after the mission Obama said he had been "only 45% to 55% sure that bin Laden was even in the compound". The document, which is believed to have been carried by all the Seals on the mission, however, indicates that US intelligence was certain of his presence.

Some Pakistani officials, including Malik, believe the briefing points to the presence of a mole in the compound. The two elder Saudi wives of bin Laden have accused Amal of betraying bin Laden, either by supplying information or by allowing herself to be tracked to the compound.

There have been reports of visits to the compound by donors and a Taliban commander. The other possibility is that US drone technology is far more sophisticated.

Documents also reveal for the first time that the two courier brothers moved to Abbottabad in 2006 from Mardan where Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the al-Qaida No 3, was captured in May 2005. According to Guantanamo detainee assessment published by WikiLeaks, he was caught while waiting for a courier. He had earlier been living in Abbottabad.

According to the report, an employee at Abbottabad Post Office was tracked after he received suspiciously large cash transfers and he led investigators to Umar Patek, one of the Bali bombers, arrested in Abbottabad in January. All these arrests in the same area seem more than coincidence, it said.

Militants attack Pakistan navy base, four killed

Flames and smokes belches out from a Pakistani base after an attack by militants in Karachi on May 22, 2011.

Militants attacked a Pakistani naval aviation base on Sunday, killing at least four people, officials said, the latest attack on a heavily guarded military installation in Pakistan. 

Senior police official Tahir Naveed said attackers were inside the Mehran base in Karachi fighting with base personnel.

Witnesses said they could hear sounds of gunshots and see smoke rising from the base. Officials said between 15 and 20 attackers were inside the base, and had attacked three hangars housing aircraft. Eight explosions were reported from the base.

"Three hangers were hit. There is some damage to aircraft or helicopters," an intelligence official said.

A least a dozen ambulances were parked outside the base, waiting to take wounded to hospital. Pakistani military and paramilitary reinforcements were pouring in, with four vehicles carrying about 10 troops each moving into the base.

Taliban militants, who have vowed to avenge the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by US special forces, have carried out several attacks since his death on May 2.

An intelligence official said four people had been killed and five wounded in the Karachi raid.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani condemned the "terrorist" attack at the naval base.

"Such a cowardly act of terror could not deter the commitment of the government and people of Pakistan to fight terrorism," Gilani said in statement.

Pakistan television reported that a P-3 Orion maritime surveillance plane was attacked in the assault.

The Karachi attack evoked memories of an assault on Pakistan's army headquarters in the town of Rawalpindi in 2009, and revived concerns that even the most well-guarded institutions in the country remain vulnerable to militants.

Pakistan has faced a wave of bombings and gun assaults over the last few years, some of them claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban.

Others have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked militant groups once nurtured by the Pakistani military which have since slipped out of control.

ABBOTTABAD

A US special forces raid on May 2 which found and killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad has also revived suspicions that militants may be receiving help from some people within the security establishment.

Pakistan and the United States say the senior leadership in the country did not know bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

On April 28, suspected militants detonated a roadside bomb in Karachi, killing four members of the navy, the third attack on the navy in a week.

The attack came two days after two bombs hit buses carrying navy personnel, killing four people and wounding 56. Taliban insurgents took responsibility for the twin attacks.