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HomeNATIONPhotojournalist Danish Siddiqui was brutally murdered by the Taliban: Washington Examiner

Photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was brutally murdered by the Taliban: Washington Examiner

Washington – Photojournalist Danish Siddiqui who got died in Afghanistan while covering clashes in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar is now said to be brutally murdered by the Taliban after his identity was verified, according to the report published in a US-based magazine on Thursday.

Siddique was in Afghanistan to cover the situation in Kandahar, reported the Afghan news channel TOLOnews.

Mr Siddiqui, according to the Washington Examiner report, travelled with an Afghan National Army team to the Spin Boldak region to cover fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban to control the lucrative border crossing with Pakistan.When they got to within one-third of a mile of the customs post, a Taliban attack split the team, with the commander and a few men separated from Mr Siddiqui, who remained with three other Afghan troops.

During this assault, he was hit by a shrapnel hit, and so he and his team went to a local mosque where he received first aid.

However, as word spread, that a journalist was in the mosque, the Taliban attacked. The local investigation suggests the Taliban attacked the mosque only because of Mr Siddiqui’s presence there, said the report.

“Siddiqui was alive when the Taliban captured him. The Taliban verified Siddiqui’s identity and then executed him, as well as those with him. The commander and the remainder of his team died as they tried to rescue him,” it said.

Micheal Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute wrote that “While a widely circulated public photograph shows Siddiqui’s face recognizable, I reviewed other photographs and a video of Siddiqui’s body provided to me by a source in the Indian government that show the Taliban beat Siddiqui around the head and then riddled his body with bullets”.

The Taliban’s decision to hunt down and execute Mr Siddiqui, and then mutilate his body shows that they do not respect the rules of war or conventions that govern the behaviour of the global community, added the report.

Mr Siddiqui won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 as part of the Reuters team for their coverage of the Rohingya crisis. He had extensively covered the Afghanistan conflict, the Hong Kong protests and other major events in Asia, Middle East and Europe.

Siddiqui and his colleague Adnan Abidi became the first Indians to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for the documentation the Rohingya refugee crisis.

His mortal remains was handed over to red cross, by the Tabilan government. He was laid to rest at the Jamia Millia Islamia graveyard where a sea of mourners gathered to pay their last respects. His body arrived at Delhi airport on July 18 and was later brought to his home in Jamia Nagar, where a huge crowd, including his family and friends, had gathered.

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