Fears are growing for the safety of a well-known Pakistani journalist who has been missing for 39 hours now and, according to an international advocacy group, is believed to be in the custody of the Pakistan’s controversial Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence . Human Rights Watch declared that Saleem Shahzad, a reporter working for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, could be subject to mistreatment and even torture while in custody.
While the ISI was said to have bristled at previous reports by Shahzad, his disappearance happened two days after he wrote a story for Asia Times Online that said that al-Qaeda had attacked a naval base in the port city of Karachi on May 22 after talks had broken down between the Pakistan navy and the global terror organization. In his report, Shahzad claimed that al-Qaeda had carried out the attack in retaliation for the arrest of naval officials suspected of links with the terror group.
The following morning, Ali Dayan Hasan, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, received a call from Shahzad’s wife. “He had told her that I was one of the people that should be called in case anything happens to him,” says Hasan. “He had feared for sometime that something like this would happen to him.” Later, Human Rights Watch was able to establish that Shahzad was being held by the ISI. “We were informed through reliable interlocutors that he was detained by the ISI,” says Hasan. Those interlocutors, he adds, had received direct confirmation from the agency that it was detaining Shahzad. In any case, Hasan says, “in a high security zone like Islamabad, it is only the ISI that can effect the disappearance of man and his car without a trace.”
Human Rights Watch was also told that Shahzad was supposed to return home on Monday night. “The relevant people were informed that his telephone would be switched on first, enabling him to communicate with his family,” says Hasan. “They were told that he would return home soon after.” But by 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Shahzad had still not been heard from. At that point, Hasan recalled that Shahzad had sent him an email on Oct. 18, 2010 that was to be released in the event of his disappearance. At the time, says Hasan, he was “fairly sure that sooner or later something was going to happen.” Human Rights Watch says that it has made repeated attempts to contact the Pakistan government and establish Shahzad’s whereabouts, but has received no response.
On Oct. 17, Shahzad had been summoned to the ISI’s headquarters to discuss the contents of an article published the day before with two officials from the agency’s media wing. That report, published in Asia Times Online, alleged that Pakistan had quietly released Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar’s deputy, to take part in talks through the Pakistan Army. According to the email, labeled “For future reference” and seen by TIME, one of the officials said the following words to Shahzad: “I must give you a favor. We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know.” Incidentally, the two ISI officials present at the meeting, Rear Admiral Adnan Nawaz and Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, are both from the Navy. Pervaiz has just been appointed the new commander of the Karachi naval base that was attacked.
Hasan of Human Rights Watch says that statement can be read as a threat. “The tone and the manner in which it was issued did constitute a threat,” he says. “Shahzad described it to me.” The rest of the meeting, as Shahzad described it in the email, was held in “an extremely polite and friendly atmosphere,” but no words were minced. In the email, the ISI official was said to have asked for the source of his story. Shahzad writes that he would name the source, but said that he had been told the information by an intelligence official and later confirmed the story from “the most credible Taliban source.” According to Shahzad’s account, he was asked to “write a denial of the story” but “refused to comply with the [ISI] demand.”
Many of Shahzad’s media colleagues speculate that the ISI is holding him to extract the identities of his sources. “It is very difficult to say what they want from him,” says Hasan. “But when the ISI picks up journalists in this manner, they are often subjected to mistreatment and torture. The longer he stays in their custody, the greater the likelihood is that he will be tortured.”
Last September, Umar Cheema, an investigative reporter for The News, an influential Pakistani daily, was kidnapped, blindfolded, stripped naked, had his head and eyebrows shaved, beaten, filmed in humiliating positions, and dumped on the side of the road six hours later. “If you can’t avoid rape,” one of his interrogators jeered during the ordeal, “enjoy it.” The perpetrators were never found, but when asked about his suspicions, Cheema told the New York Times: “I have suspicions and every journalist has suspicions that all fingers point to the ISI.”
The disappearance of Shahzad is a reminder of the multiple hazards faced by journalists working in Pakistan. In January, Wali Khan Babar, a respected reporter for Geo News, was gunned down in Karachi. Last month, reporter Abdullah Bhittani cheated death after being shot three times in Rawalpindi, while a radio station in the northwest town of Charsadda was bombed. Bhittani has recovered, but with 10 slain journalists last year, the Washington DC-based Newseum called Pakistan “the deadliest country in the world for journalists.” Reporters Without Borders ranked it 151st out of 178 countries when it comes to press freedom.
The principal threats, human rights campaigners say, come from military intelligence agencies and Islamist militants. “As a consequence, it is becoming difficult for journalists to perform their basic professional duties in the context of a war between the Pakistani state and the militants,” Hasan says. “Both parties target journalists, arbitrarily and with brutality.” Human Rights Watch has called on the Pakistan government to locate Shahzad, return him safely to his home, and hold those who held him “illegally” accountable. “To date, no intelligence personnel have been held accountable for frequently perpetrated abuses against journalists,” laments Hasan. “Tolerance for these practices has to end, now.”
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