Report in Pakistan says he escape kidnapping attempt
Bureau chief says he believes he was target for payback.
When armed ISLAMABAD — 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 criticizing the country’s powerful mil- itary or advocating peace with hostile neighbor India.
Siddiqui, the Pakistan bureau chief for the New Delhi-based online news agency World is One News, said he suspected the attack Wednesday was payback for his critical reporting on Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence agencies. Sid- diqui 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,” Sid- diqui 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 com- puters, several hard drives, his telephone and his passport, said Siddiqui, who is also a reporter for the France 24 television network and has had past run-ins with Pakistani intelligence. In May, he received threatening calls from the counter-terrorism wing of the Federal Investigation Agency, ordering him to come in for questioning. Siddiqui, who did not com- ply, filed a complaint with the courts and said he was told by the FIA that he was being investigated because of his critical stories about the military.
On Wednesday, Siddiqui’s World is One News agency, 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.
The Committee to Protect Journalists Asia program coordinator Steven Butler said the attempted abduc- tion on Wednesday “sends a chilling signal to the entire press community.”
The CPJ “is very concerned about the recent pattern of disappearances,” Butler said in an email interview. “While most of the recent disappearances have been mainly social activists, or even students, these abduc- tions amount to severe intim- idation for anyone who exer- cises free speech.”
The spokesman for Pakistan’s main intelligence ser- vice, the ISI, did not respond to a written request for com- ment about the attack on Siddiqui. The government says it is investigating the allegations and has set up a commission to investigate complaints of “enforced disappearance.” In its yearend report, obtained by The Associated Press, the commission said there are 1,532 people who remain missing, suspected of being taken by Pakistani intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Among them is peace activist Reza Khan, who was taken from his home in the eastern city of Lahore in December by armed men, who also ransacked his apartment, seizing his computer, his files and his telephone. He hasn’t been heard from since and human rights activists accuse the country’s intelligence agencies of kidnapping him to stop Khan’s attempts to improve relations between Pakistan and India through interactions between school children.
“We are convinced he was taken by the intelligence because of his work trying to improve relations with India,” said I.A. Rehman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “His neighbor saw the men take him. He took the number of the car, but the police said it was fictitious. In Pakistan only the intelligence agencies have the right to use license plate numbers that are fictitious.”
Khan’s father, Mohammed Ismail Khan, has gone to the courts to petition for his son’s freedom but has heard nothing since he was taken last month.
“The nights are very long for his mother and me. We console each other and we pray for our son. God knows where he is and what condition he is in,” the elder Khan said in a telephone interview.
Early in 2017, six bloggers and social activists, all of whom had criticized the military on social media, disappeared. Five were freed and the sixth is still missing.