The Pakistani Taliban have custody of two kidnapped Swiss tourists
and will free them if the U.S. releases a female Pakistani scientist
convicted of trying to kill Americans,
the No. 2 commander of the
militant group told The Associated Press.
Gunmen abducted the man and woman as they traveled in the southwestern Baluchistan province earlier this month.
Authorities
later said the two were taken to South Waziristan, a northwestern
tribal region that borders Afghanistan and has been a hotbed of
Pakistani Taliban activity for years.
Many locals and several
foreigners have been kidnapped by militants in the border region over
the past eight years. Some have been killed, while others have been
released or their fate is unknown, often after ransoms have been paid.
The
commander, Waliur Rehman, spoke to an AP reporter on Thursday in the
Shawal area of South Waziristan. He said his group ordered the
kidnapping in a bid to gain freedom for Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-educated
neuroscience specialist and mother of three who is serving 86 years in
an American jail for trying to shoot U.S. security officials in
Afghanistan.
Rehman said that if Siddiqui is not freed, a Taliban court will decide their fate. He did not give any deadlines.
"We have not tortured this couple, and we have no such intention," he added.
Officials at the Swiss and U.S. embassies in Islamabad declined to comment Friday on Rehman's demand.
Siddiqui,
who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis
University, had been missing for five years before turning up in
Afghanistan in 2008. Her case has become a cause celebre among Islamist
and right-wingers in Pakistan.
Rehman's demand appeared to be
aimed at getting support among the large numbers of Pakistani's
sympathetic to Siddiqui's fate rather than a genuine condition for the
couples' release.
The Pakistani army launched a major offensive
against the Taliban in South Waziristan in 2009, but many militants
still populate the area. The insurgent groups often kidnap people —
most of them Pakistanis — as a means of exerting leverage on the state
and gaining money through ransoms.
The kidnapping is the first
such incident involving Swiss citizens in Pakistan, and authorities in
Switzerland have set up a task force combining police and intelligence
services to work on the case, the Swiss Foreign Ministry has said. The
pair's identity has not been disclosed. AP
