Piotr Stańczak

Who was Piotr Stańczak?

Piotr Stańczak was a Polish geologist who was beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan in February 2009. Stańczak was abducted in the city of Attock in September 2008 after gunmen shot dead his driver, translator and bodyguard with whom he was travelling in a car. His murderers said they murdered him because the Pakistani government failed to release Taliban prisoners. Officials at the Polish Embassy in Islamabad saw the video of the murder and confirmed that the person who was murdered was Piotr Stańczak.

The taped murder was reminiscent of the beheading in 2002 of Daniel Pearl, at that time the last westerner to be murdered on video in Pakistan. Stańczak was allegedly offered the opportunity to avoid death by converting to Islam. When Stańczak refused, he was forced to read statements before his murder. The video shows Stańczak asking the Polish government not to send troops to Afghanistan, which later leads to the masked men cutting off Stańczak's head. His body was later recovered outside a paramilitary camp in Razmak and returned to Poland aboard a Pakistani Air Force plane. A brief ceremony was held on the tarmac.