Taliban militants on Sunday handed over to Pakistani officials the body of a Polish man who was beheaded in February after being held by the hard-liners for months, officials said.
Geologist Piotr Stanczak, 42, was working in Pakistan for a Polish oil and natural gas exploration company when he was seized in the volatile north-west of the country last September. His abductors killed his driver and his bodyguard.
His decapitation on February 7 - which was filmed by his captors and was the first of a Pole by Islamic militants - provoked a furious reaction from Warsaw, which slammed Islamabad's "apathy" over tackling terrorism.
Stanczak's body was handed over to officials in the town of Razmak, located about 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of Miranshah, the main town in the restive North Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan, an official said.
"Taliban handed over the body of the Polish engineer to the local administration," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The official said the body was flown out of the area by helicopter but would not disclose the destination for security reasons. In Islamabad, a Polish diplomat told AFP that the embassy was awaiting further details about the recovery of Stanczak's body.
Poland had offered a one-million-zloty (290,000-dollar) reward for information leading to the capture of Taliban militants who beheaded Stanczak. Warsaw had also requested US assistance to help capture Stanczak's killers. Poland is a close ally of Washington and has sent hundreds of troops to Pakistan's neighbour Afghanistan to battle the Taliban there as part of a Nato force.
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