Chinese man kidnapped by Taliban freed
Print Edition
A CHINESE tourist kidnapped in Pakistan by the Taliban more than a year ago has been freed, Pakistan’s interior minister said yesterday.
“He was handed over to us late last night ... Today, after a while, maybe after one or one-and-a-half hours, we will hand him over to the Chinese Embassy,” Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters.
The man, who had been cycling through Pakistan, was abducted in May last year near the western city of Dera Ismail Khan.
A senior Pakistani Taliban commander, Abdullah Bahar, told reporters soon after the kidnapping that the man was in the Islamist militants’ custody.
Khan gave few details about the man’s recovery other than saying it was the result of an intelligence operation and the culmination of more than a year of effort by the Pakistani government.
Kidnappings are on the increase in Pakistan, although it is unusual for Chinese to be targeted.
Earlier last year, gunmen shot dead six guards protecting a Spanish round-the-world cyclist in a remote area of western Pakistan. The cyclist escaped unhurt.
The Pakistani Taliban, who are seeking to set up an Islamic state in their own country, are separate from but allied to the Afghan Taliban insurgents who were driven from power in Kabul by a US-led military intervention in 2001.
China in May launched a plan for energy and infrastructure investments in Pakistan worth US$46 billion.
The ambitious plan, which would eclipse US spending in Pakistan over the past decade, aims to establish a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor between Pakistan’s southern Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea and China’s western Xinjiang region.
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