Pak Taliban video purportedly shows kidnapped Chinese man

Islamabad, May 24

The Pakistani Taliban today released a video that appeared to show a kidnapped Chinese man making a desperate appeal to his government to secure his release, a year after he was abducted.

The man known as Hong Xudong was kidnapped by the TTP in May, 2014 from Daraban area in Dera Ismail Khan which is close to the lawless northwestern tribal region. He had entered Pakistan from India the previous month and was travelling as a tourist.

A video by the militant group Jaish al-Hadeed, a splinter group of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) featured a Chinese man identifying as Hong who asked his government to accept the ransom demands by the militants.

He did not mention the amount demanded by his captors.

The genuineness of the video and of the man appearing in it was not independently confirmed. No official from Pakistan or China has so far commented on the video.

Days after Hong went missing, the Shehryar Mehsud splinter group had claimed responsibility for the abduction. The link between the Jaish al-Hadeed and Shehryar Mehsud groups is not known as militants use different names to confuse security forces who are after them.

The release of the video comes on a day when former premier Yusuf Raza Gilani managed to speak on the phone to his son Ali Haider who was kidnapped from Multan in 2013.

Gilani said that his son had called from an unknown number in Afghanistan. He said militants had demanded release of their men from the custody of the Pakistani government as a condition to set his son free. — PTI