Dera Ismail Khan: A video delivered to media outlets appears to show Pakistani militants beheading a kidnapped Polish engineer, underscoring security fears in the Muslim nation ahead of a debut visit Monday by a newly appointed Obama administration envoy.
Pakistan has witnessed several attacks on foreigners in recent months as its overall security has deteriorated amid a growing al-Qaeda and Taliban-led insurgency. In early February, an American UN worker was abducted in the southwestern city of Quetta, purportedly by separatists.
The seven-minute video appears to show the Polish hostage, Piotr Stanczak, sitting on the floor flanked by two masked men. Off camera, a militant briefly engages him in conversation before three others behead him. One of the hooded men then addresses the camera, blaming Pakistan for the killing for not agreeing to their demands to release Taliban prisoners.
If confirmed, Stanczak's death would appear to be the first killing of a Western hostage in Pakistan since US journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002.
The video was given to an Associated Press reporter Sunday in northwestern Pakistan on a flash drive by an intermediary who said he obtained it from the Taliban. The AP has elected not to distribute the images. Other international media also reported receiving or viewing footage of the killing.
Jacek Cichocki, Polish minister for security services, said he saw the full video and in his opinion 'that is the Pole and the film is authentic.'
"I can say that watching the film last night, it is a terrible thing," he told Poland's TVN24 television, adding final confirmation would have to wait until diplomatic and consular services receive the body.
Piotr Adamkiewicz, a spokesman at the Polish Embassy in Islamabad, said Monday the mission was still waiting for some formal communication from the Pakistani government.
"They are not providing us with any information at all," he said.
Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman Shahidullah Baig said Sunday that the government was investigating the existence of the video. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan has soared since US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. Many militants fled across the border to Pakistan, establishing bases and continuing to attack US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama has made resolving the Afghan war a key focus of his foreign policy strategy, appointing heavyweight diplomat Richard Holbrooke as a special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Holbrooke, who was the White House envoy to the Balkans in the Kosovo conflict, was due to visit Pakistan from Monday to Thursday, according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.
At a security conference in Germany over the weekend, Holbrooke described the Afghan campaign as "one theater of war straddling an ill-defined border."
"We have to think of it that way and not distinguish between the two," he said.
The US Embassy said Monday morning that Holbrooke was not yet in Pakistan, declining to reveal exactly when he would arrive.
A spokesman for the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan said Saturday that they killed the Polish captive because the government missed a deadline to release 26 prisoners.
Armed men pulled Stanczak from his car on September 28 after killing three Pakistanis traveling with him near the city of Attock in northwestern Pakistan. Stanczak was surveying oil and gas fields for Geofizyka Krakow, a Polish geophysics institute.
John Solecki, the American UN official, was seized February 2 in Quetta in Baluchistan province as he traveled to work at the offices of the UN refugee agency there. His driver was shot to death.
Quetta chief investigator Wazir Khan Nasir said a previously unknown ethnic Baluch separatist group called the Baluchistan Liberation United Front telephoned a local journalist Saturday to claim responsibility.
Pakistan-based Online International News Network quoted a spokesman for the front as saying Solecki was kidnapped to highlight the Baluch campaign for independence. The group has demanded the release of 141 Baluch women allegedly detained by Pakistani authorities and that the UN "solve the issue of Baluchistan under the Geneva Convention," he said.
The natural gas-rich region is home to a decades-long insurgency, but Westerners had never been targeted before.
Also Monday, a suicide bomber rammed his truck into a security checkpoint near the Bannu area outside the volatile northwest tribal regions, wounding 17 people in the blast, police official Tahir Dawar said.
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