In Memory of Hayatullah Khan: Murdered Journalist

This story has been lingering in the back of my mind all day....

Journalist Hayatullah Khan took a photo of something Pakistan's government said was never there [featured above]. Within days he disappeared without a trace, dragged off by masked men.

Last week, six months after his abduction, his body was found dumped in North Waziristan, handcuffed and shot in the back.

The tragic news has startled the nation, sparking protests, and the government ordered a judicial probe into his death. It also sent a chilling message about the risks of reporting the conflict in Waziristan, one of the premier fronts in the war on terror.

Khan's photo spoke a thousand words, much as his death does today. In December, he rushed to a house in North Waziristan, where Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian Al Qaida commander, had been killed moments before in an explosion.

Government authorities would later say Rabia had blown himself up while making a bomb. But Khan, who enjoyed a reputation as an intrepid reporter, snapped photographs of contrary evidence: fragments of a US Hellfire missile.

The Pakistani government stuck to its story, dismissing the photo, which was published in Pakistan. But Khan reported that Rabia met his demise at the end of a missile fired by a CIA drone. That assertion seems to have cost Khan his life.

-- Christian Science Monitor