Ex-Times translator slain in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Noor Ahmad Noori, an Afghan translator who formerly worked for The New York Times in Afghanistan, was found beaten and stabbed to death, wrapped in a sack and dumped on a roadside late Thursday outside the Helmand province capital of Lashkar Gah where he lived, government officials and family members reported.

The relatives said Noori, 29, a well-known local journalist who was engaged to be married, had been abducted by armed men earlier Thursday and had been missing for nine hours.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing, and it was unclear whether it was a criminal or personal matter, or possibly connected to the Taliban insurgency.

A spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, Omar Zwak, said Friday that “the police found the body wrapped in a sack and dumped north of Lashkar Gah” and that he had been “beaten severely until he died.”

Noori’s elder brother, Rasiullah, said Noori also had multiple stab wounds in his head and body and might have suffocated.

Police are investigating the case, and the Helmand governor promised that the government would release the information as soon as the investigation was completed.

The governor pledged to “find the culprits,” Zwak said.

Noori first went to work for the Times in 2010. He left by mutual agreement early last fall. Noori also worked for Bost, a local Helmand radio broadcaster.

He lived in Lashkar Gah and was well-known to many people in the local government as well as to the civilians working with the U.S. military mission there. Noori had worked with a number of news organizations in Helmand and spoke some English.

The Taliban are strong throughout Helmand despite many efforts to curb their influence including an extensive surge by the U.S.Marines in 2010 and 2011. The British military has also worked hard to reduce the scope of Taliban control both before and during the U.S. surge, but the largely Pashtun population in Helmand includes many insurgent sympathizers. Helmand remains one of the Taliban strongholds.

Although the city of Lashkar Gah is still relatively secure, a few miles beyond the city limits, the Taliban are able to move with considerable freedom. Farther afield in the province, they have virtual control.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group based in New York, 24 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since 1992, and of those, all but two have been killed since 2001.

The vast majority were killed in covering wars there, and half of the journalists killed were murdered, as opposed to dying in crossfires or other lethal accidents, according to the committee.

More than two-thirds of those killed were foreigners, and the rest were local Afghan reporters.

Meanwhile, an influential former Afghan warlord who served as water and energy minister in a previous administration narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Friday in the country’s western Herat province, a police spokesman said.

Ismail Khan - who also is running for vice president for one of the candidates in the April 5 presidential election - was attacked after midday prayers, said police spokesman Abdul Raouf Ahmadi.

Khan was leaving the mosque in Herat city, the provincial capital, when the bomber set off his explosives. No one except the suicide bomber was killed in the blast, said Ahmadi. Khan could not be reached for comment.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which underscored some of the challenges Afghanistan faces ahead of the election, a vote that will help shape the country’s future after the departure of foreign combat troops.

In 2010, President Hamid Karzai had wanted to keep Khan - a Tajik who was a prominent warlord during the civil war of the 1990s and who retains considerable local power among his minority - in his administration, but the nomination was narrowly defeated.

Critics said keeping Khan would have proved Karzai remained beholden to regional power brokers at the expense of the country’s national interests.

Khan, 67, is now running for vice president on the ticket of a presidential contender, Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, also a former warlord. Karzai can’t run for a third-consecutive term and has not yet endorsed anyone. There are no clear favorites in the race.

Both Sayyaf and Khan were known as warlords during Afghanistan’s civil war from 1992 until the Taliban takeover in 1996, fighting on the side of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Previously, both also actively participated in the war against the Soviet occupation.

Information for this article was contributed by Taimoor Shah and Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times and by Amir Shah of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/25/2014

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