Islamabad: The white Toyota car of slain
Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad was brought from Islamabad
to Sarai Alamgir, the place from where it was recovered, in a
cargo container apparently to mislead the investigators, a
media report said here on Tuesday.
Shahzad's brother-in-law Hamza Ameer, the complainant
in the murder case, said the car was handed over to the family
with a full petrol tank and half-filled tank of compressed
natural gas, which would have been impossible, had the vehicle
travelled more than 100 kilometres between Sarai Alamgir and
Islamabad, from where the scribe was kidnapped.
Ameer suspects that the killers did not want to be
tracked by the cameras installed on the highway between the
federal capital and the place from where Shahzad's car was
found, The Express Tribune reported.
"The slain journalist Saleem Shahzad's car was not
driven from Islamabad to Sarai Alamgir, the place from where
it was recovered, but was brought there in a cargo container,"
it said.
The scribe's May 29 killing had drawn strong condemnation
from the media and human rights activists, who accused
Pakistan's powerful military-run ISI of having played a role
in his kidnapping and subsequent murder.
The ISI has denied that it was behind the kidnapping and
murder of Shahzad. Even the Punjab police had exonerated the
ISI in an interim report submitted to the Supreme Court,
claiming that they had not received any leads that would
suggest the involvement of any intelligence agencies.
However, Shahzad's family had been critical of the
investigation so far, saying that many questions were not
being asked.
The daily said the family claimed that several pieces
of evidence were missing. They insisted that Shahzad's e-mails
were likely to contain the most concrete evidence against his
killers.
The paper also claimed that the Punjab police had begun
"threatening" journalists who had been pursuing the story of
the murder.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 20:09