The allegation by a top US military officer that Pakistan’s government sanctioned the killing of a journalist who wrote about the country’s powerful security establishment was “extremely irresponsible,” the Pakistani state-run news agency said.
The verbal sparring over the death of Saleem Shahzad has added even more strain to US--Pakistani relations, which have teetered badly since the US raid that killed late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 in a northwest Pakistani army town.
Shahzad’s tortured body was found in late May after he had told friends he had been threatened by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, a spy unit that is notorious for harassing reporters in a country considered one of the deadliest in the world for journalists.
The ISI has denied it had anything to do with killing Shahzad, but the suspicions have persisted and prompted unusual levels of public criticism of the spy agency. Shahzad’s death also added to the pressure on the Pakistani military since the unilateral US raid against the al-Qaeda chief, which left it humiliated.
On Thursday, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said he believed the Pakistani government “sanctioned” Shahzad’s killing. Although Mullen said he could not directly tie the killing to the ISI, he was the first US official to make such a public allegation.
Mullen further said that the reported abuse of other journalists in Pakistan was not a good road for the government in Islamabad.
“It’s a way to continue to, quite frankly, spiral in the wrong direction,” said Mullen, who has devoted enormous time in the last four years to trying to improve relations with Pakistani leaders.
The state-run Associated Press of Pakistan issued a statement hours later in which an unnamed government spokesman called Mullen’s allegations “extremely irresponsible” and said that it “will not help in investigating the issue.”
The news agency, which acts as a government mouthpiece, often does not name the officials it quotes in reports.
The spokesman further said that the Pakistani government has created a commission to investigate Shahzad’s death and urged anyone who has anything to share on the subject at the “national or international level” to do so with the panel.
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