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J&K minister rejects BSF version
of Dutch nationals' killing

Basharat Peer in New Delhi

The killing of two Dutch nationals, suspected members of a suicide terrorist squad, by Border Security Force jawans in Srinagar on Sunday is snowballing into a major controversy.

Already, a minister of Farooq Abdullah ministry has raised questions about the BSF version of the incident, while the brother of one of the victims has accused the security forces of cold-blooded murder.

"The official BSF version is far from [the] truth ...nobody is going to accept that members of a suicide squad were foolish enough to attack armed BSF men with knives," Minister of State for Home Najeeb Suharwardhy told reporters.

Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, however, refused to comment. "We will know the facts only when the inquiry report comes," he said.

The brother of Khalid el Hassnowi, who was shot dead by BSF jawans along with Ahmed el-Bakiowli early on Sunday morning at Dalgate in Srinagar, said Hassnowi was not involved in terrorism.

"All these rumours of an extremist link have caused us a lot of pain," he told De Telegraaf in The Hague.

Local media and human rights activists said the two were tourists and they were killed after an argument with BSF personnel led to a scuffle.

Meanwhile, officials from the Dutch embassy in New Delhi flew to Srinagar on Tuesday to collect the bodies.

"We have got in touch with the Indian authorities on this issue. Some of our officials are flying to Srinagar. We will try our best to ensure that the corpses of the two Dutch nationals are flown to the Netherlands," Robert Arsee, the spokesman for the Royal Netherlands Embassy in India told rediff.com.

The Dutch embassy in New Delhi, however, is maintaining silence over the charge that Khalid el Hassnowi and Ahmed el-Bakiowli were members of a suicide squad.

"We are not commenting on the incident till we receive official papers from the Indian authorities," a spokesman said.

A source in the embassy said the parents of Khalid and Ahmed had lodged a complaint on December 18 that the two were missing.

With Inputs from Agency Reports

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