A Pakistani journalist, who has been a vocal critic of the powerful military and government, was released late on Tuesday hours after the government confirmed he had been abducted, his family said.
“My husband was abducted this morning outside the school [in Islamabad] where I work,” said Kaneez Sughra, the wife of 51-year-old Matiullah Jan.
She said school security camera footage showed that Jan, who had arrived to collect his wife from work, had been bundled into a vehicle after being cornered by five other vehicles — three of them unmarked, one with police markings and the other an ambulance.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Thank God, he’s back,” Sughra said.
He was left on the outskirts of the capital after about 12 hours in captivity.
The military’s public relations wing did not respond to a request for comment on Jan’s reported abduction.
“It is clear that he has been abducted,” Pakistani Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz said, adding that the government would commit all its efforts to tracing him and identifying who could be behind the kidnapping.
The Committee to Protect Journalists in demanding Jan’s release said that he was among the journalists the Pakistani army accused of sharing anti-state remarks on social media in 2018.
Jan — one of thousands of journalists and media workers who were laid off during a security crackdown in the buildup to the 2018 general election — told Reuters last year that he was forced out of his job after criticizing army generals interfering in politics, a charge the military denies.
Some journalists and bloggers critical of the military — including commentator Gul Bukhari who was abducted and set free in a similar fashion — who were rounded up in 2018 blamed the army’s intelligence arm, Inter Services Intelligence, for their detention.
The Pakistani Army has denied any involvement in Bukhari’s abduction.
Bukhari and Jan both come from military families.
Jan faces a contempt of court case for a Twitter post critical of Pakistani Supreme Court judges and was due to appear in court yesterday.
“My husband had told me that he could be arrested in the case, but we never expected a kidnapping,” Sughra said.
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