The Pak Taliban kidnapped Ajmal Khan, vice-chancellor of Islamia College University Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
, the capital of northwestern troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
province, in September 2010.
A security bigshot in Peshawar told AFP that Khan was recovered from "an operational area in North
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Wazoo tribal district".The Pak military has been waging a major assault against Taliban strongholds in North Waziristan since mid-June.
A statement from the Pakistain military said "security forces safely recovered Mr Ajmal Khan" but gave no details of how he came to be freed.
It said: "Security forces and intelligence agencies were trying to locate Ajmal Khan since 8 September 2010 when he was kidnapped in Peshawar while he was going to the university."
Ajmal had appeared in several video messages asking the government to negotiate his release with Pakistain's Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) movement, which began a bloody insurgency against the state in 2007.
Government officials said despite many rounds of back-channel talks in the past, Taliban had refused to release Khan, demanding the release of important Taliban capos held by security forces.
Pakistain rights activists, university teaching staff and students in the northwest had protested against Khan's kidnapping many times but all efforts to recover him were futile.
Northwest Pakistain suffers from chronic insecurity, largely connected to the semi-autonomous tribal belt near the Afghan border.