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In early May, seven months after an earthquake killed more than 70,000 people and left 3 million homeless, the Pakistani army pushed out almost all remaining foreign relief workers from the still-devastated region of Azad Kashmir, the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir.
Then, between May 13 and 16, a series of 38 throat slittings and beheadings occurred in villages of southern Azad Kashmir. The youngest victim was four months old.
The army immediately blamed infiltrators from India.
But on the morning of May 17, two men said to be armed with Sten guns and daggers accosted girls on their way to school in the village of Sanghola. Alerted by the girls' screams, villagers armed themselves with whatever weapons were at hand and surrounded the school.
The two men ran to the nearby forest where they were captured by |
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Pakistan’s intelligence service is implicated in a series of brutal murders in Kashmir, writes scott atran |
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villagers. The men claimed to be road workers but a body search revealed ID cards of the kind carried by the Pakistan Army's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Villagers identified both as Punjabi by their accents.
Around noon, an estimated 100 villagers escorted the two men, on foot, to local police at Rawalakot. At 11:30 pm, six army officers, including a colonel and a brigadier, took the captured men from the police at gunpoint.
Whereas most local police are Kashmiri, most army personnel at the ISI headquarters, down the road from Rawalakot, are Punjabi.
The next day, the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, Sardar Sikandar Hayat, declared that his government was "unable to protect you [the people of Kashmir]".
On May 19 thousands of people demonstrated in Rawalakot, and protests also occurred in Kotli,  |
