Pak: UK Red Cross worker beheaded

Pakistan, April 30, 2012: Organization condemns ‘barbaric’ killing of Muslim from Scotland.

A British Red Cross operative working in Pakistan was found beheaded at the weekend.

Khalil Dale, 60, was kidnapped in January. His body was found yesterday wrapped in plastic near the city of Quetta in Baluchistan where he had been based for about a year.

He was working as a health program manager on secondment to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) when he was grabbed from a clearly marked vehicle near his home. He was not seen alive again.

Police said his body was found with a note attached saying he had been killed because a ransom had not been paid to his captors, believed to be the Pakistani Taliban.

“The ICRC condemns in the strongest possible terms this barbaric act,” Yves Daccord, director general of the ICRC, said yesterday.

“All of us at the ICRC and the British Red Cross share the grief and outrage of Khalil’s family and friends. We are devastated.”

Dale, who was from Dumfries in Scotland, was a convert to Islam. He had worked for the Red Cross and ICRC for many years, previously in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

Colleagues in Quetta described him to agencies as a “humble and tireless humanitarian.”

He was awarded an MBE in 1994 for his work in Somalia.

“I utterly condemn the killing of Mr Dale,” British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said. “This was a senseless and cruel act, targeting someone whose role was to help the people of Pakistan.”

– ucan