NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman has neither denied nor confirmed a claim by the family of missing tribal journalist Hayatullah Khan that he has been given into US custody for his alleged links with Al Qaeda, the Tribal Union of Journalists president said on Saturday. “During our meeting, we asked the governor to comment on Khan’s family’s allegation that he has been handed over to the US. The governor neither denied nor did he confirm the allegation. He just said that he had checked with all security agencies and Hayatullah is not with the government,” TUJ President Sailab Mehsud said, referring to a meeting between the governor and a TUJ delegation in Peshawar on March 22.Khan has been missing since December 5 when five masked men kidnapped him outside Mir Ali town in North Waziristan days after he contradicted the government version about the killing of an Al Qaeda leader on December 1. Military spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan said he didn’t know Khan’s whereabouts. “If he is in the US custody, the Interior Ministry may know it,” he told Daily Times.
Brig (r) Javed Iqbal Cheema, the director general of the Interior Ministry’s Crisis Management Cell, also denied the report that Pakistan had handed over Hayatullah to the US. “Neither we have handed over any Pakistani into US custody nor it is our policy to hand over our nationals to the US. We have never handed over any Pakistani to the US,” he said. “Some intelligence officials told us that Hayatullah is no more in Pakistan,” his brother Ehsanullah Khan told Daily Times. Ehsanullah said that the intelligence sources said Hayatullah was last seen in Pakistan on January 17 when he was “shifted from Islamabad to somewhere else”.
Mehsud said the family’s allegation could be true. “It is possible that Hayatullah has been handed over to the US,” the TUJ president told Daily Times by phone from Dera Ismail Khan. Ehsanullah said intelligence sources had earlier told him that Hayatullah was “fine” and the family should not worry about him. “And now the same intelligence people are saying that he is no more with them.”