At War: Pakistan Loses Another Journalist

Arshad Arbab/European Pressphoto AgencyNasrullah Afridi, a local journalist in Peshawar, Pakistan, was killed by a bomb planted in his vehicle.

“You better come to your senses.” This was the last threat received by the Pakistani journalist Nasrullah Afridi days before he was killed in a car bomb blast in Peshawar on May 10, his friend and colleague Sher Khan said in a telephone interview.

Pakistan has been listed as one of the deadliest countries for journalists by independent journalists’ associations, and there have been a number of uninvestigated deaths of journalists. However, the harshest and most frequent attacks have taken place in the northwestern region of the country, which includes Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Since the kidnapping and slaying of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, at least 15 other journalists have died in targeted killings in Pakistan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mr. Afridi, 35, had been receiving threats since 2007; those threats eventually forced him to leave his home town, Bara, in Khyber Agency, a tribal area in northwest Pakistan. His house was even bombed with low-intensity explosives.

Mr. Afridi, like a number of other journalists from the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan, had to move his base to Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There, he worked for Mashriq, an Urdu-language daily, and was a correspondent for the state-owned Pakistan Television. He was also president of the Bara Press Club.

“We thought it was safer for us to work from Peshawar,” said Mr. Khan, who was with Mr. Afridi the day before the bombing. That day, he said, Mr. Afridi had been buying wheelchairs for a school for special-needs children with money he had raised. The cause was close to Mr. Afridi’s heart, because three of his six children had disabilities.

Mr. Afridi was widely known to have been a been a target of Lashkar-e-Islam, a banned militant group headed by Mangal Bagh that is known to have ties with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Islam is one of several militant groups fighting for control of the Khyber Agency. The Pakistani military has had limited success in tamping down the fighting among these groups, and Mr. Mangal Bagh has not been captured.

Most of the journalists from the Khyber Agency live in the same building where they work. Mr. Afridi did not.

Mr. Khan said he heard a loud explosion four minutes after Mr. Afridi had called him to let him know that he was leaving early for home because he was tired. Mr. Khan and other journalists ran outside, thinking there had been a blast in the building, but saw Mr. Afridi’s car in flames. When the flames died down, they saw a charred body in the driver’s seat, unrecognizable even by those who had known him for years.

“One could not even tell if that body was of a human being,” Mr. Khan said, his voice breaking during the interview. Mr. Afridi’s associates and relatives decided not to show his body to the family. Mr. Afridi’s father, who caught a glimpse of it during the burial, has still not recovered from the shock. Mr. Afridi’s eldest son is 18, and there is no family member who can support his family now.

Mr. Afridi’s death, like other targeted killings in the region, has created a climate of fear among reporters and residents. “We are scared of our own shadow,” Mr. Khan said.

Rabia Mehmood is the I.W.M.F. Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T., and is a correspondent for Express 24/7 in Lahore, Pakistan. Follow her on Twitter @Rabail26.

 

2 Russians Guilty of Killing Rights Lawyer and Journalist

 

MOSCOW — A young Russian nationalist and his common-law wife were convicted Thursday in the particularly brazen murders of a prominent human rights lawyer and a journalist two years ago, as the jury sided with prosecutors who argued that the ideologically driven defendants considered their victims enemies of Russia.

The slain lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, 34, had worked to jail violent nationalists and had once pursued a murder case against the man convicted of both fatal shootings, which were carried out at close range in broad daylight on a busy Moscow street near the Kremlin. The journalist, Anastasia Baburova, 25, was a freelancer who happened to be interviewing Mr. Markelov. Both had connections to the loose network of Russian groups opposed to the nationalist and neo-fascist groups that have proliferated here since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Members of the country’s beleaguered human rights community immediately praised the verdict as a rare victory for justice in a country where high-profile murders are rarely solved.

“Our long experience allows us to distinguish between cases fabricated by the secret services and law enforcement agencies and cases that these services and structures investigate conscientiously,” Oleg P. Orlov, the head of the rights group Memorial said in a statement. “Today we can confirm that the real killers and not someone arbitrarily accused were seated on the defendants’ bench.”

The nationalist, Nikita Tikhonov, 30, was found guilty of the fatal shootings, while his common-law wife, Yevgenia Khasis, 26, served as lookout. Both had denied any guilt, and both slashed their wrists this week in what appeared to be an attempt to delay the verdict.

Sentencing is expected next month, but their lawyers vowed to appeal.

Mr. Markelov’s death added to a growing toll from the community of rights activists here. He had worked closely with Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist who was gunned down in October 2006, and also with Natalya Estemirova, the rights worker who was kidnapped and murdered in July 2009.

There have been no convictions in those killings.

Ms. Baburova worked at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where Ms. Politkovskaya had also worked.

Other journalists from the paper have also met violent ends.

Vladimir Zherebenkov, a lawyer who represented Ms. Baburova’s parents, said they were “deeply satisfied.”

“They now know that the perpetrators of this crime will definitely be punished,” Mr. Zherebenkov said.