Summary of case

On the morning of November 3, 2015, one day after the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, journalist Zaman Mehsud was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his motorcycle in Tank, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

According to Reuters, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban commander Qari Saif Ullah said: “We killed him because he was writing against us. We have some other journalists on our hit list in the region, soon we will target them.”

Mehsud, 40, was travelling from Gomal bazaar when unidentified gunmen opened fire near the Dabara refugee camp. The assailants, who were on a motorcycle, managed to escape after shooting him.

Mehsud was critically injured and taken to the District Headquarter Hospital Tank, and later to the District Headquarters Hospital in Dera Ismail Khan where he succumbed to his injuries. Mehsud received four bullets to the chest, doctors said.

Mehsud hailed from Mantoi area of Ladha in South Waziristan and was residing in Tank. He left behind his wife, three sons and two daughters.

He was a senior journalist associated with the Urdu language Daily Ummat and the SANA news agency. He was also running his own Twitter news account, “Gomel News”, and had served as president and secretary general of the Tribal Union of Journalists’ South Waziristan chapter. He was also a monitor for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

According to local journalists, he had not received any threats and did not have an enmity with anyone.

The slain journalist’s brother, Aslam Khan, registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the unidentified killers.

Updates

Mehsud's brother Aslam informed PPF that no one had been arrested yet and police had come to ask the family if they knew anything about the killer. He added that in March 2019, Corps Commander Mazhar Shaheen gave Rs3 lac in compensation to Mehsud's wife.