Pak journo who wrote on Mehran base attack missing

Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad has gone missing days after authoring an article in which he contended that Al Qaeda attacked a naval airbase in Karachi after failed talks with the Navy to release some arrested persons.

Shahzad, the Pakistan bureau chief of Asia Times Online, went missing last evening after he had left his house in Islamabad to participate in a television programme.

He did not reach the TV station, the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) said in an email.

The journalist did not contact his

family or friends, and his mobile phone and car had not been traced as yet, SAFMA said.

Human Rights Watch said it feared that Shahzad may be in the "illegal custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies".

It called on the government to immediately locate Shahzad.

On May 27, Shahzad authored an article in which he alleged that the Al Qaeda carried out the attack on PNS Mehran naval airbase in Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the Navy and the Al Qaeda for the release of naval personnel arrested on suspicion of links with the terror group.