Monday, February 9, 2009

Pakistani Taliban Beheads Polish Engineer in Released Video

Via FoxNews -

Poland pledges to capture and "punish" the Taliban militants who beheaded a Polish engineer in Pakistan on Friday before delivering a video of the attack to the media, the Times of London reports.

Piotr Stanczak was reportedly kidnapped four months ago while working in the Attock district — a region close to Pakistan's lawless North West Frontier Province.

A video released to media outlets Sunday shows the beheading of Stanczak just minutes after he appears on tape urging the Polish government not to send troops to neighboring Afghanistan.

On Monday, Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the video had been authenticated and pledged to bring the terrorists to justice, according to the Times of London.

"The cassette of the execution, this bestial execution, is authentic and unfortunately it confirms the worst," Sikorski reportedly said in a statement. "Now we can no longer save our compatriot, we are going to try to punish his killers."

Sikorski promised to issue international arrest warrants for the Taliban militants, and officials charged that elements within the Pakistani government shared blame for the killing.

But Pakistan's top diplomat in Poland firmly rejected the accusation that some members of the Islamabad government are sympathetic to Islamic extremists, saying his country is snarled in a bitter fight with terrorist groups that is killing many of its own.

Stanczak's death would appear to be the first killing of a Western hostage in Pakistan since U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002.

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