ISLAMABAD: The court of a Judicial Magistrate in Islamabad on Wednesday remanded Journalist Waheed Murad in the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) custody for two days under the country’s cybercrime laws for posting “intimidating content” online.
The FIA produced Journalist Waheed Murad before Judicial Magistrate Abbas Shah and sought his physical remand.
Murad’s lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha were also present in the court.
The FIA requested the court to grant a 10-day physical remand for Murad. However, Mazari objected to the FIA request, questioned why his remand was needed as he was a journalist. She also asked whether the FIA had sent a prior notice to the journalist.
On the occasion, Chattha requested the court Murad’s legal team be allowed to see the FIR against his client.
The judge asked about the time of the journalist’s arrest, in response to which the FIA representatives present in court said he was taken into custody last night.
They said Murad had made posts about Balochistan and the banned Balochistan Liberation Army group, adding that his social media accounts needed to be investigated and his cell phone needed to be recovered as well.
“Journalism has become a crime in this country,” Murad’s lawyer, Chattha, said during the hearing. “If no crime has been committed, the court can discharge and also make a judicial remand. Journalists are arrested so they can be harassed,” he added.
The judge subsequently granted the FIA Murad’s two-day physical remand.
Earlier, his family had filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for his recovery, saying that he was “forcibly disappeared by unknown” individuals from his house in the federal capital. The petition was filed by Murad’s mother-in-law Abida Nawaz through lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha.
The state, the defence ministry, the Islamabad police chief and the Karachi Company police’s station house officer were listed as respondents in the case.
Abida claimed the journalist was “forcibly disappeared from his home in Sector G-8, Islamabad at around 2:05am by unknown officials presumably belonging to intelligence agencies, and accompanied by persons in black uniforms and two police double cabin vehicles”.
She described herself as an “eyewitness to the enforced disappearance of Murad, and was also herself manhandled by the abductors who also took away her phone”.
The petition urged the IHC to direct the respondents to “immediately trace and produce” Murad before the court.
The petition also requested that the authorities provide the counsel and family access to Murad. It further urged the IHC to direct the respondents to disclose any charges against the journalist and where he was being kept.
The petition highlighted that Murad had raised his voice about the recent alleged enforced disappearance of US-based journalist Ahmad Noorani’s two brothers.
“The pattern of his abduction was the same as in the past,” Mazari told AFP. “The abductors, their modus operandi, and the way they stormed the house in the dead of night make it clear who they are.”
It later emerged that a first information report (FIR) was filed against the journalist by the FIA’s Cyber Crime Reporting Centre under Sections 9 (glorification of an offence), 10 (cyber-terrorism), 20 (malicious code) and 26A (punishment for false and fake information) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca), 2016.
It said Murad was “found sharing highly intimidating content” on social media platforms through which he had “knowingly disseminated/propagated, fake, false, misleading and misinterpreted information leading to hatred against the government functionaries”.
The FIR quoted one of his recent social media posts regarding the issues in Balochistan. It also said that he had shared a FactFocus report by journalist Ahmad Noorani, “in which the pictures of the family members of the chief of army staff were shared publicly along with highly intimidating remarks, violating their privacy”.
‘I have not been tortured’
“I have not been tortured,” Murad said while responding to a question from a reporter.
He said he had asked the people who had arrived at his home last night to identify themselves. “The police broke the door and entered the house,” Murad said, adding that his mother-in-law was a cancer patient who had come from Canada for treatment, but she was also allegedly beaten up.
“I was handed over to the FIA twenty minutes ago,” he said regarding today’s court appearance.
Rights activists, media fraternity ‘alarmed’
On other hand, rights activists and the media fraternity expressed their concern over the arrest of the journalist.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in a post on X it was “alarmed by reports of the abduction” of Murad.
“Murad’s whereabouts remain unknown at present. We demand that he be traced and recovered safely and promptly and his abductors brought to book,” the HRCP stated.
