Ashrafuddin Pirzada
LANDIKOTAL: Shinwari, Afridis and other local tribes on Saturday collectively arranged a sit-in and protest walk in Khyber Sultankhel at Takia ground and demanded forthwith arrest of the journalist Khalil Jibran killers and judicial inquiry.
Hundreds of residents, tribal elders, local representatives and civil society members participated in the sit-in camp and protest walk held in Sultankhel.
Speakers including Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam(Fazl) leader and religious scholar Mufti Tehseenullah Shinwari, Malik Abdur Razaq Zakhakhel, Shakir Afridi, Pakistan People’s Party local leaders Shah Rehman and Hazeat Wali Afridi, Landikotal mayor Shah Khalild Shinwari, Jamat-e-Islami Landikotal Ameer Murad Hussain Afridi, Awami National Party Landikotal president Shah Hussain Shinwari and others said that government should take proper steps to ensure the security of citizens. They said Khalil Jibran was the third resident killed in the same locality in a few months.
They said that target killing was again at the peak in Landikotal while journalists were receiving threats from militants.
They constituted a grand jirga and nominated fifteen elders from each tribe to form a committee and chalk out the next plan to maintain their security.
Shakir Afridi said they could not keep silent to bear the deaths of their residents. He said a police officer and a resident of Sultankhel were gunned down in the Mazreena locality but they did not raise voices for their protection. He said this week journalist Khalil Jibran was brutally assassinated near his home.
Speakers said Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan(TTP) threat letters were issued soon after the Khalil Jibran Afridi murder and that more journalists in the Khyber district were at their target and they would quickly be killed.
The protesters later marched from Takia ground to Ayub Killay for three kilometres. They were holding placards and banners inscribed with slogans that arrest the Khalil Jibran killers, and stop killing citizens and journalists.
Meanwhile, special advisor to the chief minister on information barrister Muhammad Ali Saif, district police officer Salim Abbas Kulachi, political leaders of different parties and civil society members visited Khalil Jibran Afridi resident and consoled his tragic murder. Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif pledged to take the issue with the chief minister to probe the incident properly.
