Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Tuesday held Brahamdagh Bugti responsible for kidnapping US citizen John Solecki, who was abducted from Quetta in 2009 and released later.
Solecki, who was the chief of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Quetta, was kidnapped in 2009 and later released after successful negotiations between the Pakistani government and the abductors.
Malik alleged that the grandson of former Balochistan chief minister Akbar Bugti was directly involved in Solecki’s kidnapping. “The phone calls record of Barhamdagh and his accomplices showed that after kidnapping Solecki, they used his name as Lal Bakra (Red Goat) to dodge the security forces probing the matter,” he said.
He was addressing a two-day conference titled “Media and Professionalism- Keeping Journalists and Journalism Safe in Hostile Environments”, which was organised by Intermedia Pakistan. The conference was attended by office bearers of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS).
Talking about the rise in killings of working journalists in Pakistan, Malik said the government was ready to form a commission to probe into the murders of 76 journalists.
