A Never Heard Cry of Mr. Khalilullah N

A Never Heard Cry of Mr. Khalilullah N

A Never Heard Cry of Mr. Khalilullah N. This is to bring into your kind notice the current situation and the sufferings of the Nuristani family and the act of extreme truculence upon them.

It was the 20th of May, 2002, time; 2:30 A.M. I was sleeping on the terrace, as it was too hot inside plus we had the power cut off. Suddenly I felt a gun placed right on my head and I heard a voice ordering me to wake up. As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a masked man pointing a huge Kalashnikov (AK47) right toward my head. I tried to offer some kind of resistance by trying to snatch the Kalashnikov away from that person and I would surely have succeeded in doing so had it not been for the other man hitting me on the nose with the back side of the Kalashnikov and breaking my nose bone, two teeth and injuring my eyes, and the family was tortured with Kalashnikov. Not realizing the pain, I still tried to fight them back until I heard the cry of my younger son asking me to put a halt to my actions as they had my family as hostage inside. Knowing how helpless I was, I eased my hold on the Kalashnikov.

I was constantly being asked for my Canadian friend, Hank Cooper, and the Canadian girl, as they pronounced it, my daughter. Everybody was helpless. Nobody could have done anything as there were 7 people, 3 with a Kalashnikov, 2 with 32 bored guns, 2 of them with huge staggers, and 4 people were waiting outside in the car. They were constantly asking for Hank Cooper and my daughter. They wanted to kidnap all the western-country-nationality holders to possess some amount of money promised by Al-Qaeda to bring any foreigner dead or alive. We told them that they had left long ago. They demanded my younger daughter as a ransom for Hank and Zainab (my daughter). Upon hearing this, my two sons raised and avoided them from doing so. My nephew was hit twice on the back with a Kalashnikov and when his activeness didn't lose consciousness they sprayed chloroform on him and he fainted right on the spot.

They scanned the whole house for precious stuff. The room was like hell. It was so messy that it was proving hard to place a foot down. It was 4:00 A.M., they had stayed at our house for almost one and a half hours now. The fear of dawn and the waking up of the villagers scared them off, and in a rush they ended up looting 2 to 3 million-rupees-worth of my coin collection. Afghan jewelry collection, stagger collection, mineral stone collections, gem stones and some decoration pieces, video camera, gold chain, watches, underground beads, pearls, personal photo albums, my ID card, Rs-35,000 in a case, my daughter's hand bag which had her personal documents and ID card etc. and 4 Indian sculptures which were about 600 to 1,000-year-old.

The whole action was so perfectly scrutinized that no-one had any chance whatsoever to fight back. The only thing that we could have done at that time was to have prayed to God for my and the family's safety. They escaped through the gate saying that they would be back for the Canadian guy Hank Cooper and my daughter and my family.

After all this we called the police. The police arrived at 5:00 A.M. The police investigated if we had any such suspect. Of all the people that I could think of knowing that Hank and my daughter had arrived from Canada, Baryaley, a barber near our house was the prime suspect for me and my family as he was the only one who entered our house when Hank was here. Police chased Baryaley and arrested him. On torturing him, he, Baryaley, confessed to being guilty of the crime. He named all his fellows who were involved in the crime with him. Police arrested 4 of the named criminals and all four of them confessed to their crimes. Although the Police was successful in apprehending the named criminals, the head of the gang, the person who had gotten away with the jewelry and stuff, was still on the loose. What I believe is that the people captured by police are very low classed members of the highly intricate gang. The master-mind behind all this is hiding somewhere. The criminals are in the captives in Thana Pishtakhara, but "the two" who had taken all the stuff with them are still on the loose. As the police were on the chase for the 2 members, they brought their mothers and wives to the police station so that they could hand themselves over to them.

It's not that I doubt the gallant efforts of the S.H.O, who has been extremely helpful throughout. But from the past, Pakistani police's reputation to keep this in the back of their mind that the captives could release themselves by bribing one or two of the officials which would be another disaster to my life. They had been torturing my family (kids and women) with Kalashnikovs, asking them of the American people, as they think of every foreigner to be an American. They looted the house when they couldn't find Hank and Zainab.

It is a major security issue for me and my family members as I don't have anyone other than God to protect my family. What I believe is that these people were not members of the Al-Qaeda network themselves but were being paid for performing an assignment of kidnapping the foreigners and taking them to the Al-Qaeda network and I presume that the family members of these people are still on the loose performing many precarious activities.

The stuff that they have looted is not an effort of one day but the inheritance of my father and the arduous jobs that I have performed in the past to earn every single penny of it legally. I am afraid that this could not be the last that I would see of these people; they will be back in different forms to kill or kidnap me and my children for money.

My life here is in danger, if something happens to me or to my family, the international community such as the U.N, and Pakistani police officials will be responsible for it, because all of you with all your great resources cannot save our family, I doubt you can be helpful to anyone. It is better, in that case, to change your motives and rename your organization and tell everyone that you can't help them in any way, then to make fools out of them. Since 1993, I have been crying for help from the international community but didn't receive any attention.

I hope and pray that my voice will be heard this time by the international community. Otherwise I will believe that there is no one who can really listen to a man who based his life on love, peace and humanity. End of the letter. No agency ever helped him. Even Canada ended up denying his application for refugee status due to him fighting the Russians years earlier.