Horrifying video of militants beheading Polish engineer is released by Pakistani Taliban



A shocking new video that appears to show Pakistani militants beheading a kidnapped Polish engineer has emerged.

The seven-minute video appears to show the Polish hostage, Piotr Stanczak, sitting on the floor flanked by two masked men.



Off camera, a militant briefly engages him in conversation before three others behead him.



The video is so horrifying that some news wire agencies chose not to distribute the images.



This frame grab from video footage released by Pakistani Taliban militants shows kidnapped Polish geologist Piotr Stanczak minutes before he was beheaded

One of the hooded men then addresses the camera, blaming Pakistan for the killing for not agreeing to their demands to release Taliban prisoners.

If confirmed, Stanczak's death would appear to be the first killing of a Western hostage in Pakistan since U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002.

The video was given to an Associated Press reporter yesterday in north-western Pakistan on a flash drive by an intermediary who said he obtained it from the Taliban.

Jacek Cichocki, Polish minister for security services, said he saw the full video and in his opinion 'that is the Pole and the film is authentic.'

'I can say that watching the film last night, it is a terrible thing,' he told Poland's TVN24 television, adding final confirmation would have to wait until diplomatic and consular services receive the body.

Piotr Adamkiewicz, a spokesman at the Polish Embassy in Islamabad, said today the mission was still waiting for some formal communication from the Pakistani government.

Terror: Stanczak in another shot taken from the video moments before his death

'They are not providing us with any information at all,' he said.

Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman Shahidullah Baig said yesterday that the government was investigating the existence of the video.



Violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan has soared since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001.



Many militants fled across the border to Pakistan, establishing bases and continuing to attack U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama has made resolving the Afghan war a key focus of his foreign policy strategy, appointing heavyweight diplomat Richard Holbrooke as a special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Holbrooke, who was the White House envoy to the Balkans in the Kosovo conflict, was due to visit Pakistan from Monday to Thursday, according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.



At a security conference in Germany over the weekend, Holbrooke described the Afghan campaign as 'one theatre of war straddling an ill-defined border.'

'We have to think of it that way and not distinguish between the two,' he said.

The U.S. Embassy said this morning that Holbrooke was not yet in Pakistan, declining to reveal exactly when he would arrive.

A spokesman for the Taliban in north-western Pakistan said Saturday that they killed the Polish captive because the government missed a deadline to release 26 prisoners.

Armed men pulled Stanczak from his car on September 28 after killing three Pakistanis traveling with him near the city of Attock in northwestern Pakistan.



Stanczak was surveying oil and gas fields for Geofizyka Krakow, a Polish geophysics institute.

John Solecki, the American U.N. official, was seized February 2 in Quetta in Baluchistan province as he traveled to work at the offices of the U.N. refugee agency there. His driver was shot to death.

Quetta chief investigator Wazir Khan Nasir said a previously unknown ethnic Baluch separatist group called the Baluchistan Liberation United Front telephoned a local journalist Saturday to claim responsibility.

Pakistan-based Online International News Network quoted a spokesman for the front as saying Solecki was kidnapped to highlight the Baluch campaign for independence.

The group has demanded the release of 141 Baluch women allegedly detained by Pakistani authorities and that the U.N. 'solve the issue of Baluchistan under the Geneva Convention,' he said.

The natural gas-rich region is home to a decades-long insurgency, but Westerners had never been targeted before.

Also today, a suicide bomber rammed his truck into a security checkpoint near the Bannu area outside the volatile northwest tribal regions, wounding 17 people in the blast, police official Tahir Dawar said.



