Pak Govt may have approved Shahzad’s murder: Mullen

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Pakistan Government may have sanctioned the abduction and subsequent killing of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, a top US military official has said.

“I haven’t seen anything that would disabuse that report,” Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff, told reporters when asked about media reports that the Pakistani Government approved the killing of the reporter.

At the same time, the top Pentagon official noted that he hasn’t seen any concrete evidence in this regard either of the Pakistan Government or that of the ISI, as reported by The New York Times recently.

“The reports that he was killed and there were government officials who had sanctioned that. I have not seen anything to disabuse the report that the government knew about this. But I can’t, would not be able to walk in that here is the string of the evidence that I have to confirm it,” he told reporters at a Pentagon Press Association luncheon.

“I haven’t seen anything that confirms that (ISI was responsible for Shahzad’s killing),” Mullen said on Thursday.

“I am hugely concerned about obviously his death. His isn’t the first. For, whatever reason it has been used as a method historically. There are others certainly claims historically. I have seen Pakistani officials — I just gave them a room — who deny it,” he said.

“Certainly from my perspective, it’s something we all need to pay our attention to including the Pakistanis. It’s not a way to move ahead. It's a way to continue to quite frankly spiral in the wrong direction,” Mullen said.

Shahzad was abducted in Islamabad on May 29, two days after he alleged in an article that Al Qaeda had infiltrated the Pakistan Navy. His body, bearing marks of torture, was found the next day in a canal in Punjab province.