Pakistani militant group executes Mullah Omar's trainer

Jan 23, 2011, 7:55 GMT

Peshawar - A Pakistani insurgent group has executed a former senior officer of country's top intelligence organization who once trained of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, intelligence and rebel sources said Sunday.

Amir Sultan, a retired officer of Pakistan's prime military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) also known by the code name Colonel Imam, was kidnapped with another intelligence officer and a British-Pakistani journalist in April.

An intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Sultan was assassinated near Mir Ali, a major city in the restive North Waziristan tribal district, on Saturday.

His family had failed to meet deadline for paying a ransom of 50 million Pakistani rupees (around 590,000 dollars), the source said.

A local Taliban commander in Mir Ali confirmed the execution, calling it 'a sorrowful incident.'

Neither the government nor Sultan's family has confirmed the death.

Various groups of militants in North Waziristan were divided on the capture of Sultan, who gave guerilla training to Afghan mujahidin during the resistance against Soviet occupation and supported the rise of Taliban in mid-1990s.

Senior Afghan Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has bases in North Waziristan, is believed to have made several attempts to convince a militant group from Pakistan's central province of Punjab to release Sultan.

Sultan had traveled to North Waziristan with ISI officer Khalid Khwaja to help journalist Saeed Qureshi in making a documentary. Khwaja was reportedly executed by the Punjabi Taliban, a group of militants from Pakistan's largest province.

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