There are some new developments in the case of the murdered Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. Unnamed Obama administration officials have told the New York Times that senior officials of the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, ordered the killing of Shahzad in an effort to silence him. One U.S. official said, “Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society.” Ali Dayan Hasan, the head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, first tied the ISI to Shahzad’s killing. In a recent interview with Democracy Now!, Hasan said Shahzad was targeted for reporting on links between the ISI and militant groups.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Human Rights Watch: “Saleem Shahzad investigated—essentially wrote about, because he wrote about al-Qaeda and the Taliban and that whole terrain of counterterrorism and terrorism in Pakistan. What he basically concentrated a lot on were links between Pakistani intelligence and military, on the one hand, and elements of al-Qaeda and Taliban, on the other, and infiltration both ways, but particularly in Pakistani intelligence structures and military structures, including the navy, air force and the military itself, the army itself.”