Pakistani militants behead another 'US spy' in Pakistan

PAKISTAN: Pakistani militants decapitated an Afghan cleric accused of spying for US forces and making recordings of anti-Taliban speeches, tribal officials said on Wednesday.

The man's remains were found late on Tuesday in a sack by the side of a road in Jandola, a town in the troubled South Waziristan tribal region, in the fifth such killing in Pakistan this year, the officials said.

A note in Urdu was pinned to the bag identifying the man as Akhtar Usman, an Afghan, and saying his death is a result of spying for Americans across the border in Afghanistan, the officials said.

The militants also scrawled the word hypocrite across his forehead, they said.

Pro-Taliban militant sources said Usman was an Afghan who taught at a madrassa in Miranshah, the main town in neighbouring North Waziristan region.

"He had been speaking against Taliban and had recorded several audio cassettes against militants," a militant said, but declined to identify the killers.

Local authorities took the body to their office in Jandola and placed it outside to be formally identified.

Taliban last week cut off the hands and feet of a suspected spy in neighbouring North Waziristan.

On February 6 the bullet-riddled bodies of two more suspected spys were found in the same area, while another was killed around February 1.