Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army on Wednesday recovered a Pakistani engineer who was kidnapped in Afghanistan earlier this year. Malik Faiz Ahmed, a resident of Rawalpindi, was abducted in Afghanistan on August 21.

The engineer had been working on the Torkham-Jalalabad road project in Afghanistan when he was abducted. “My father has returned in good health,” Farhan Malik said as he thanked the army and the media for their efforts. According to Farhan, his father had first been brought to Peshawar, where he was received by his family. They later brought him home. According to a plea for help by the engineer’s son issued soon after the kidnapping, Ahmed had been working with a construction company overseen by the Frontier Works Organisation when he was picked up. “It is said that the militants are demanding their people [held] in [Pakistani security agencies’] custody in exchange,” the poster read. “No solid information until now,” it added. It is not clear under what terms and circumstances his release was secured. Separately, two wanted terrorists were killed in an intelligence-based operation (IBO) carried out by security forces in the Jahan Abad area of Swat on Wednesday, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The militants were identified as Asad, commonly known as Anus, along with Wahab. The two were wanted for their involvement in terrorist activities in Malakand, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Security forces acted on a tip-off that the two militants had crossed over from neighbouring Afghanistan into the Swat Valley. According to the military’s media wing, the terrorists were killed after their hideout was traced and an ensuing encounter took place. Two facilitators were also apprehended in the operation. On December 3, as many as 11 ‘terrorists’ of a proscribed militant outfit were caught during search operations in various parts of Balochistan.

Published in Daily Times, December 7^th 2017.