AP man told to quit after Taliban threat

ISLAMABAD: Ashraf Khan, a Karachi-based correspondent of the American news agency, the Associated Press has been asked by his organization to leave the job after receiving death threats from the Taliban, says the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

He had been filing stories on the working of some seminaries reportedly imparting training to students to become suicide bombers.

Khan had received a written letter from the Taliban in late February that said it was the first and the last warning to him.

The AHRC said in a post on its website that AP’s chief has told him to quit for the organization has been declared an ‘infidel organization’.

To make matters worse for Khan, the AP would not help him relocate to the US “because of the policy shift in the aftermath of 9/11.”

Earlier in January, the Taliban shot dead Mukarram Khan Atif, who worked for Dewa Radio, a Pashto language radio channel of the Voice of America andDunya TV. He was saying his evening prayers when he was killed by two gunmen in Charsadda, a town in the lawless Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.