ISLAMABAD: Pakistani anchorman Imran Riaz Khan was arrested from his house in Lahore, his brother said on Friday, less than five months after the journalist returned home after a nearly four-month long incarceration in which his whereabouts had been unknown.
The prominent TV journalist turned promoter of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party was picked up from his home in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore late on Thursday night. Footage of police vans outside his house were widely shared on social media.
Riaz, who has more than 5.5 million followers on X, had taken on the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies after ex-PM Khan was removed from power in April 2022 and blamed the army for his ouster. He was picked up in May and returned home in September, with authorities giving no indication of where he had been.
“They have picked up my brother, it’s been seven hours,” Riaz’s brother Usman Riaz Khan, who is also a journalist, said on X early on Friday morning. “A cloth was placed over his head and he was dragged away.”
He said he hoped Riaz would be presented before a court and due process followed.
Earlier this week, the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cybercrime Wing had summoned Riaz over his alleged involvement in an anti-judiciary campaign on social media platforms. The issue revolves around a controversial judgment given by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa that many political and religious leaders have viewed as insulting to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and blasphemous.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, for which there is widespread acceptance, are often misused against Pakistan’s tiny minority religious groups and even sometimes against Muslims to settle personal scores, critics say. Although no one has ever been executed, blasphemy convictions are common in Pakistan. Most convictions are thrown out on appeal by higher courts, but mobs have lynched dozens of people in vigilante attacks even before a case is put on trial.
In an X post on Thursday following the FIA summons, Riaz’s lawyer Mian Ali Ashfaq said his client had responded to the agency’s notice.
“Such notices have come to dozens of journalists across Pakistan and after answering the first notice, Imran Riaz Khan has also answered this second notice,” the lawyer said.
“More than two dozen such cases have been dismissed, this one will also be dismissed.”
Human rights groups have widely accused Pakistani security agencies of being behind the disappearances of political workers, leaders and rights activists, allegations that authorities deny.
