Police officials said the suspect, identified as Colonel Brekke’s former co-worker Major Younis Joseph, managed to escape over the weekend from a detention facility in Lahore, despite carrying handcuffs. Joseph’s family has been placed under house arrest to pressure him to turn himself in, police said.
An official probe was also launched into the circumstances of Joseph’s escape and charges were to be filed against police officers who supervised him before he fled, according to officials involved in the case.
The Norwegian-born Colonel Brekke, 50, was shot and killed last Thursday evening, September 27, after presiding over a meeting at the Salvation Army’s headquarters in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, investigators and co-workers said.
SHOT TWICE
A man apparently broke into the Christian mission headquarters in Lahore’s Mazang district and shot Brekke two times in his own office late Thursday, September 27, BosNewsLife monitored. Suspect Joseph was second-in-command to Brekke but had reportedly been fired because of alleged financial wrongdoing.
Pakistani police have described the murder as part of an internal conflict at the organization. The conflict that motivated the murder, according to police, had to do with an expensive piece of real estate. Salvation army officials declined to discuss more details.
Speaking to reporters, the communications chief of the Salvation Army in Norway, Andrew Hannevik said however that he "don’t know of any similar case within our organization." He described Brekke as "a fantastic resource with wide experience."
BUSY MAN
Brekke led the Salvation Army’s work in Pakistan since last year after he was previously stationed in other countries, including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Salvation Army’s world leader, General Shaw Clifton, will travel to Oslo, Norway, to lead the funeral services for Colonel Bo Brekke, the organization said.
He has described Colonel Brekke as "a Salvation Army leader of unusual and distinctive talents." He said that, "both he and his wife, Colonel Birgitte Brekke, were known for their hearts of compassion towards the marginalized." Although apparently not related to Islamic militant groups, the murder has added to concern among minority Christians in predominantly Islamic Pakistan about anti-Christian violence.
The Salvation Army is active in Pakistan as part of its worldwide mission to spread the Christian faith and support education, the relief of poverty, and what it calls "other charitable objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind as a whole." The organization is present in 111 countries, involving more than 1.5 million ‘Salvationists’ and 100,000 employees. (Introducing Jawad Mazhar as BosNewsLife’s Pakistan-based Special Correspondent. Read more from Jawad Mazhar via the Rays of Development Organization. www.raysofdevelopment.org).
