Pakistan says it needs Afghan cooperation for investigation into kidnapping of envoy’s daughter
- Silsila Alikhil, 26, the daughter of Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, told police she was held for several hours by unknown assailants on Friday
- Pakistan’s interior minister said investigations so far had not shown that Alikhil was kidnapped, calling the allegations an ‘international conspiracy’
Pakistan said on Monday it was waiting for information from the Afghan government in an investigation into the brief kidnapping of the Afghan ambassador’s daughter in Islamabad, after Afghanistan raised questions over the credibility of the investigation.
Silsila Alikhil, 26, the daughter of Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, told Pakistani police she was assaulted and held for several hours by unknown assailants on Friday, following which Kabul pulled out its diplomats from Islamabad.
“The investigation is ongoing and we are waiting for them to come and give their point of view; to say anything now would be premature,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a news conference on Monday in Islamabad.
Qureshi said Afghanistan should not have pulled out its ambassador and senior diplomats from Pakistan.
Earlier on Monday, Afghan Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar complained to Qureshi about the remarks of a senior Pakistani minister, according to a statement from Afghanistan’s ministry of foreign affairs.
“Atmar said unprofessional remarks and premature judgments could strongly affect bilateral relations and the credibility of the ongoing, and still incomplete, investigation,” it said.
On Sunday night, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid, to whom the Islamabad police reports, told Pakistani television channel Geo News that the investigation so far had not shown that Alikhil was kidnapped.