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Polish engineer's refusal to convert costs him his life Posted : Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:29:39 GMT Author : DPA Islamabad - Piotr Stanczak did not exhibit the slightest hint of hesitation when the Pakistani Taliban asked him to choose between execution and conversion to Islam. Whether the Polish geologist acted out of pride or religious conviction, he decided to pay through his blood to save his faith, a choice that bewildered his killers and keep them talking about him with respect after his murder. Stanczak, 42, was kidnapped September 28 on his way to survey for oil exploration in...

Body of Polish man slain in Pakistan returned home Wednesday, 29 Apr, 2009 | 03:06 PM PST | Warsaw, Poland - The remains of a Polish geologist beheaded by militants in Pakistan were returned to Poland in a casket draped in the two countries' flags and covered in flowers. Piotr Stanczak's body was flown to Warsaw's military airport on a Pakistani air force plane. In a short ceremony on the tarmac, a Roman Catholic priest prayed over the white casket. Dressed in black, Stanczak's son and girlfriend stood briefly by the casket, their heads bowed. The geologist was one of...

Taliban militants on Sunday handed over to Pakistani officials the body of a Polish man who was beheaded in February after being held by the hardliners for months, officials said. Geologist Piotr Stanczak, 42, was working in Pakistan for a Polish oil and natural gas exploration company when he was seized in the volatile northwest of the country last September. His abductors killed his driver and his bodyguard. His decapitation on February 7 – which was filmed by his captors and was the first of a Pole by Islamic militants – provoked a furious reaction from Warsaw, which slammed Islamabad's...

EXCLUSIVE - I know who killed Polish engineer Created: 13.02.2009 17:38 EXCLUSIVE - Thenews.pl talks to Mushtaq Yusufzai, the first journalist to learn of the horrific death of Piotr Stanczak, the Polish geologist beheaded by the Taliban in Pakistan. "We have finished him," were the chilling words of the Taliban spokesman, early Saturday morning, to award winning journalist Mushtaq Yusufzai, who works for The News International, Pakistan's leading English language newspaper. "But how did you kill him," asked Yususzai, who, even though he has covered the violence in the lawless borderlands of north western for many years, was still shocked...

A shocking new video that appears to show Pakistani militants beheading a kidnapped Polish engineer has emerged. The seven-minute video appears to show the Polish hostage, Piotr Stanczak, sitting on the floor flanked by two masked men. Off camera, a militant briefly engages him in conversation before three others behead him. The video is so horrifying that some news wire agencies chose not to distribute the images.

KOHAT, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants released a video tape Sunday of them beheading a Polish geologist whom they said they killed because Pakistan's government refused to release Taliban prisoners. The Islamist militants said Saturday they had executed the Polish engineer, Piotr Stanczak, who they kidnapped in September, because the government had refused to free 60 captured militants before Friday's deadline. A tape was delivered to the office of a Reuters reporter in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan showing two masked men cutting off Stanczak's head. Before he was killed, Stanczak was seen on the tape appealing...

Taliban release tape of Polish engineer’s death Created: 08.02.2009 19:39 A video tape showing the last moments of the Polish captive in Pakistan, killed on Saturday by the Taliban, has been handed into the Reuters office in the north western town of Dera Ismail Khan. The tape shows two men cutting off the head of Piotr Stanczak, a Polish engineer who was kidnapped by the Taliban last September in the Attock region, near the border with Afghanistan. A statement by the Taliban in Pakistan on Saturday said that they would not be delivering the body of the engineer unless certain...

Taliban beheads Polish engineer Created: 07.02.2009 10:28 UPDATE - A spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban claimed, Saturday, that they have carried out the threat to behead Piotr Stanczak, the Polish engineer kidnapped in the northwest borderlands in Pakistan last September. "We have beheaded the Polish engineer after the government failed to meet our demands,” said the spokesman, as reported by Pakistani media, referring to an earlier ultimatum whereby the Taliban threatened to kill the hostage if prisoners were not released and Islamic law was not put in place in certain regions of Pakistan. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in Munich this...

Kidnapped Pole - why not send in GROM? Created: 04.02.2009 14:26 As the Taliban deadline looms, many call for Poland to send its equivalent to the SAS to the Pakistani lawless borderlands. Wednesday sees the deadline delivered to the Pakistani government by kidnappers of a Polish engineer who was abducted last September. Family and friends of Piotr Stanczak, an engineer working for a mining company in Pakistan, call for the foreign ministry to be more actively involved in his release. “There is nothing more we can do," says Pawel Gras of the ruling Civic Platform (PO) party, underlining, that "this...