Islamabad, July 5(ANI): Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan's premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist over his scathing reports about militant infiltration in the country's military, according to US officials.
New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of Saleem Shahzad from Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior ISI officials directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, The New York Times quoted two senior administration officials, as saying.
The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were "barbaric and unacceptable," one of the officials said.
The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence, and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials, the report said.
"There is a lot of high-level concern about the murder; no one is too busy not to look at this," said one.
A third senior US official said there were enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Shahzad's death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed, the report added.
"Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan's journalist community and civil society," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information.
The disclosure of this information could further aggravate the badly fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan, which has worsened significantly since the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan safe house on May 2, and consequently, deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government, military and intelligence hierarchy.
Obama administration officials will deliberate in the coming days on how to present the information about Shahzad to the Pakistan Government, an administration official said.
Shahzad was the 37th journalist killed in Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The day after Shahzad's waterlogged body was retrieved from a canal 60 miles from Islamabad, the ISI publicly denied accusations in the Pakistani news media that it had been responsible, calling them "totally unfounded." (ANI)
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