Taliban claims doctor beheaded over broken hostage deal:

[Praxius]

Taliban claims doctor beheaded over broken hostage deal

The Taliban beheaded an Afghan doctor Tuesday and will kill four more hostages unless the government hands over the corpse of a top militant commander, said a spokesman for the group. The purported spokesman, Shuhabuddin Athul, blamed the beheading on the Afghan government. He said officials didn't keep a promise to swap the body of Taliban military chief Mullah Dadullah for five hostages — the doctor, three Afghan nurses and a driver. Dadullah, also known in Afghanistan as "the butcher of Kandahar," was killed by U.S.-led forces in May in what NATO called a "serious blow" to the insurgency. The Taliban commander's body was reportedly buried in a secret location. On Monday, a Public Health Ministry spokesman said President Hamid Karzai had ordered the trade of Dadullah's body for the hostages, who were abducted by Taliban fighters in southern Kandahar province in March. Athul said Tuesday that a relative of Dadullah went to retrieve his body but Afghan authorities did not hand it over. The claim could not be immediately verified. The Taliban had reportedly given Afghan authorities a Tuesday deadline for the transfer. Dadullah's death was seen as one of the biggest blows to the Taliban since a U.S.-led coalition toppled their regime in late 2001.

Now think about their background and beliefs..... do you think they were justified in their actions? It's very disrespectiful to not allow proper return of fallen commrades in battle....

Why the hell didn't they give the body back to them in the first place? It's not like they were asking for supplies, or the release of prisoners... they asked for the body of their commander back.....

[Praxius]

Update:

Taliban retrieves slain commander's body, vows to free hostages

The body of a slain top Taliban commander was retrieved by his family Thursday, and in exchange militants will release four kidnapped Afghan medical workers, a purported Taliban spokesman said. The beheaded body of a fifth kidnapped medical worker was in southern Helmand's Kajaki district, where his family could get it back, Shuhabuddin Athul, who claims to speak for the militants, said in a telephone call from an unknown location to an Associated Press reporter. The militants killed the health worker Tuesday because the government hadn't handed over the body of commander Mullah Dadullah in time, said Athul, whose exact ties to the militant leadership are not known. The other four would be released on Thursday, Athul said, without providing further details. The militia had warned Tuesday that one of the five hostages would be killed each day until authorities returned the body of the commander, who was killed during an operation in southern Afghanistan last month. The health workers — a doctor, three nurses and a driver — were kidnapped by suspected Taliban militants in Kandahar's Zhari district on March 27 after they had administered vaccines and other treatment at a refugee camp, officials said. It was not immediately clear which of the five was killed. Authorities were not immediately available for comment. President Hamid Karzai ordered Monday that Dadullah's body be exchanged for the release of five Afghan health workers kidnapped in the country's south. The decision followed an exchange demand from Dadullah Mansoor, the brother of the slain commander, who now heads the militant operations in southern Afghanistan. Mullah Dadullah was the second top-tier Taliban field commander to die in six months, after a U.S. airstrike killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani in December.