Kidnappers say Solecki still alive

ISLAMABAD: John Solecki, an American kidnapped in Pakistan while working for a UN refugee agency, was still alive, a spokesman for the separatist group holding him said on Monday after media reports that he had been killed. Pakistani television channels had run a headline saying the Quetta Press Club had received an anonymous telephone call saying Solecki had been killed and his body would be left in a couple of hours. A spokesman for the previously unheard of Balochistan Liberation United Front later telephoned a Pakistani news agency office in Quetta to deny any call had been made from the group. “He is alive,” Shahak Baloch, said in a call to a news agency. “We have not made any call.” Solecki was abducted on February 2 by gunmen who ambushed his car and shot dead his driver in Quetta. reuters