Tahir Dawar
RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal
November 15, 2018
A high ranking Pakistani police official who was abducted in the capital city of Islamabad has been found dead in eastern Afghanistan, authorities said.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release on November 14 that Afghan authorities informed the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul that a body was found by locals in Dur Baba district of Nangarhar Province near the border with Pakistan on November 13.
Afghan officials said that the service card of Tahir Khan Dawar was recovered with the body, the ministry said. The Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Idrees Zaman told Radio Mashaal on November 14 that the ministry was working to ascertain the facts and confirm the identity of the corpse.
Dawar, 50, had been serving as head of the Peshawar police’s rural circle. He was kidnapped from Islamabad on October 27.
Pictures circulated on social media on November 13 appeared to show Dawar’s badly tortured body with a hand-written Pashto letter placed on his chest, purportedly written by Wilayat Khorasan, a name used by the militant Islamic State affiliate that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Shaukat Yousafzai, the provincial Information Minister of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province told media that officials were not able to retrieve Dawar’s corpse on November 14. Yousafzai said the corpse might be handed over to Pakistan on November 15 via the Torkham border crossing and brought to Peshawar.
The Pakistani Senate discussed the apparent murder in its session in Islamabad on November 14. Opposition parties criticized the federal government for failing to protect the police official, and claimed authorities did not investigate the case properly.
Meanwhile, dozens of people gathered outside Tahir Dawar’s residence in northwest Peshawar city on news of his death.