Pakistani journalist cheats death
IsLAMABAd: When armed men tried to kidnap and threatened to kill him, Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui feared he would become another statistic in a growing list of activists and bloggers who have disappeared in Pakistan after criticising the country’s powerful military or advocating peace with hostile neighbour India.
Siddiqui, the Pakistan bureau chief for the World is One News, a New Delhi-based 24-hour television news channel, said he suspected the Wednesday attack was payback for his critical reporting on Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence agencies.
Siddiqui was heading to the airport to catch a flight to London when his taxi was stopped.
He was ordered out of the vehicle, beaten and threatened.
He escaped, fleeing into oncoming traffic and flagging down a passing car. Behind him he said he heard the gunmen shout: “Shoot him! Shoot him!”
“They wanted to make me a missing person,” Siddiqui said in a telephone interview from a local police station where he went after the attack to file a complaint and demand police protection.
“This has been coming. It’s all about what I write.”
The gunmen took his computers, several hard drives, his telephone and his passport, said Siddiqui,
On Wednesday, Siddiqui’s World is One News was inaccessible in Pakistan.
Visitors to the site were told: “The site you are trying to access contains content that is prohibited for viewership from within Pakistan.”
It’s not clear when the site went offline in Pakistan.