Militant Group in Pakistan Threatens to Kill U.N. Hostage
This image pulled from video purportedly shows John Solecki, an American working for the U.N.
(Associated Press)
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Saturday, February 14, 2009
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 -- An obscure Pakistani militant group threatened to kill a kidnapped American relief worker within 72 hours unless Pakistani authorities release 141 women from prison, U.N. officials and news service reports said Friday.
The kidnappers released a video showing a blindfolded hostage, purported to be John Solecki, delivering a desperate appeal for freedom. "This is a message to the United Nations," the man said on the tape. "I am not feeling well. I'm in trouble. Please help me resolve this problem soon so that I can gain my release."
Solecki is employed by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and a spokesman for that agency, Gonzalo Vargas-Llosa, said it believes that the man depicted in the video "is indeed John Solecki." He said, "We have nothing further to add at this time beyond reiterating our appeal that John be released."
The video, which was given to a local Pakistani news agency, provided the first hard evidence that Solecki is alive, although it heightened concern about his fate.
Gunmen kidnapped Solecki on Feb. 2 while he was traveling in a U.N. vehicle in the town of Quetta, Pakistan, where he headed UNHCR's Afghan refugee program. Solecki's driver, Syed Hashim, was shot to death. The kidnappers also presented the local news agency with a letter containing the death threat.
Solecki was UNHCR's top official in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, where the agency is overseeing the repatriation of more than 400,000 Afghan refugees who have fled fighting in their country since the 1980s. A previously unknown group, the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, asserted responsibility for his kidnapping.
The release of the video comes about a week after Taliban fighters in Pakistan reportedly executed a Polish geologist, the first Western hostage killed in Pakistan since the 2002 slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
A woman who answered the phone at the New Jersey home of Solecki's father, Ralph, a prominent archaeologist, said the family did not want to make a statement.
