Author: Correspondents In Wana, Pakistan
Publication: News.com.au
Date: February 28, 2007
URL: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21303303-401,00.html
Pakistani Taliban militants decapitated an
Afghan accused of spying for US forces and scrawled the word "hypocrite"
across his forehead, tribal officials said today.
The man's remains were found in a sack by
the side of the road in the town of Jandola in the troubled South Waziristan
tribal region, in the fifth such killing in Pakistan this year, the officials
said.
A note in Urdu was pinned to the bag identifying
the man as Akhtar Usman, an Afghan, and saying his death "is a result
of spying for Americans" across the border in Afghanistan, the officials
said.
Local authorities brought the body to their
office in Jandola and placed it outside to be formally identified.
Militants last week cut off the hands and
feet of a suspected spy in neighbouring North Waziristan. On February 6 the
bullet-riddled bodies of two more were found in the same area, while another
was killed around February 1.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Pakistan
on Monday to urge President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on al-Qaeda and
Taliban militants who are allegedly regrouping in the semi-autonomous tribal
zone.
Pakistan signed peace deals with insurgents
in South Waziristan in 2005 and North Waziristan in 2006, prompting concerns
from NATO, US and Afghan officials.
