RAWALPINDI: Lieutenant Colonel Khalid Ameer and three of his other relatives have been secured due to role played by tribal elders and local notables.
“Safe and unconditional release of Lt Col Khalid Ameer and three of his other relatives has been secured due to role played by tribal elders and local notables. All the abductees have safely returned home,” says a statement of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
According to media reports, militants in northwestern Pakistan released video Thursday of an army colonel and his brother, a senior civilian security officer, showing them in captivity and requesting authorities help secure their freedom.
The abducted officers were a part of a group of four people, including their third brother and a nephew, whom gunmen abducted Wednesday evening while attending their father’s funeral in the militancy-hit Dera Ismail Khan district.
The outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for kidnapping the four men but did not share their demands publicly.
“We are safe and well and in the custody of the Taliban in a remote area where the Pakistani government has no control,” Lt Col Khalid Ameer stated in the 35-second video.
Two men dressed in traditional attire, holding assault rifles, are seen in the background with their faces deliberately kept out of the video frame.
“We appeal to the government and our higher authorities to promptly accept the Taliban’s demands for our release,” Ameer said without elaborating.
The brother of the army officer, Asif Ameer, a police assistant commissioner, made a similar statement and urged his relatives to pressure Pakistani authorities to secure their freedom.
Area security officials confirmed the identities of the hostages and the authenticity of the video to VOA on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the matter with the media.
The fate of the other two hostages was not immediately known. The TTP sources claimed that they do not produce videos of civilian captives who are not associated with the Pakistani military and law enforcement agencies.
The Pakistani Taliban routinely carry out hit-and-run attacks against security forces and government targets in Dera Ismail Khan and other districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
