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| India-Pakistan |
| Police questioning three terror suspects claiming to be journalists |
| 2008-05-16 |
| Three young men suspected of links with militants, picked up by Swat police on Thursday, claimed they were journalists but the organisations they said they worked for had not ‘owned them,’ Swat police said on Thursday. "We are probing the three young men who said they were journalists, but when their offices were contacted they were not owned," a police official, who requested anonymity, told Daily Times. Police picked up the suspects – Attaur Rehman and Khurram Shehzad from Karachi, and Muhammad Abdur Rehman from Islamabad -- from a market in Mingora on Wednesday, after their movement was deemed suspicious. The suspects are aged between 20 and 25. "Two of the three suspects said they work for Al Jazeera TV and had come here for professional work. However, when we contacted the Arabic-language TV channel’s bureau in Islamabad, they did not own the young suspects," said the police official. He said Swat Police received a tip off from a security agency in Islamabad that three suspects had left the capital for Swat district. He also said two of the suspects were carrying ‘madrassa ID cards,’ while the third was in possession of an 'Islam' newspaper ID card. Police say they are investigating whether the suspects have links to militant groups and if they were on ‘special mission’. We are quizzing the suspects from different perspectives to make sure they are not terrorists," the police official said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Waitaminit... when they found they couldn't read or write, they figured they weren't journalists Does not strike you something odd in that phrase? Since when was that a detriment for the journo job? [answer: before 1979, when Newsweek declared that they are not in news business but in business to mold opinions, after that the only requirement was to toe "party" line] |
| Posted by: Spike Uniter 2008-05-16 22:20 |
| #2 I guess when they found they couldn't read or write, they figured they weren't journalists. Of course they still might have been employed by the NYTs. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-05-16 10:09 |
| #1 Had they said "We are property, we write what our editor tells us to write", they would have known they were reporters, probably for AP or Rooters. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-05-16 09:02 |