Pakistani militants free Chinese engineer

Pakistani Taliban militants have freed a Chinese telecommunications engineer after holding him captive for more than five months, a spokesman for the militants said.

Pakistani Taliban militants have freed a Chinese telecommunications engineer after holding him captive for more than five months, a spokesman for the militants said on Sunday.

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Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the militants in the northwestern Swat Valley, said the engineer had been freed as a "goodwill gesture" to the Chinese people.

"He has been released. He's fine," Khan said.

The engineer was kidnapped along with another Chinese colleague and a Pakistani driver and a guard near the Afghan border in August while returning to a guest house after working on a telecommunications tower.

Security forces recovered his colleague and the two Pakistanis seven weeks later.

(Reporting by Kamran Haider, Editing by Dean Yates)