Ex-Afghan governor abducted in Islamabad

A former governor of Afghanistan’s Herat province has been abducted from a market in an upscale district of Islamabad, the Pakistani police said on Saturday.

Pakistan is in the grip of a homegrown Taliban insurgency but the tightly-guarded capital has a very low crime rate in general and the F-7/2 sector where Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi was seized is a high security area that houses politicians, bureaucrats and expats.

Mr Wahidi was going to a restaurant in the market with his grandson on Friday evening when he was abducted by unidentified men, a police official, who requested anonymity, said.

The boy reported the kidnapping to the local police station and said that Mr Wahidi was in Islamabad to apply for a British visa, the police said.

“We have registered a case against kidnapping of the former Afghan governor and the case is being investigated,” Zia-ul-Qamar, a spokesman for the Islamabad police, said.

Afghanistan expressed serious concerns at the kidnapping of Mr Wahidi and urged Pakistani authorities to immediately recover him.

“Afghanistan is seriously concerned at the kidnapping of Syed Fazalullah Wahidi, former governor of Heart in Islamabad,” the Afghan foreign ministry said.

“We are asking Pakistan to use all resources for his immediate recovery,” the statement added. Unidentified men kidnapped Sayed Fazalullah Wahidi on Friday from a busy marketplace when he was with his grandson in Islamabad, Afghan embassy said. Diplomatic sources said that so far the Islamabad police had been unable to trace whereabouts of the former governor. According to a police official, the former governor had been staying at a guesthouse in Islamabad’s F-7 sector. Mr Wahidi had earlier arrived in Islamabad along with his family to get visas to travel to UK as British embassy in Kabul does not directly issue visas to Afghan nationals.