Pakistani journalist who criticised military tells of attempted abduction
An award-winning journalist known for his critical reporting
of Pakistan ’s
powerful military has said he narrowly avoided abduction after his taxi was
stopped by armed men. Taha Siddiqui, who has reported for the Guardian, France 24
and other outlets, said he was travelling on a highway in Rawalpindi on Wednesday when two vehicles
blocked his car from the front and back. Four armed men emerged from each car and three more appeared
from another nearby, he said, cordoning off the area and then swarming his
vehicle.
“I was being beaten and dragged away and I kept resisting.
Then one guy in perfect English said: ‘Stop resisting,’ and then he said:
‘Shoot him in the leg,’” Siddiqui told the Guardian from a hospital in Islamabad . The men forced him back in his car, he said, from where he
fled through an unlocked door on the other side before attempting to wave down
a passing military vehicle. “I yelled and screamed at them to help me because I was
being kidnapped, but a heavy-looking guy who was well dressed told the military
vehicle to move forth,” he said. “They seemed to know each other.”
Running through oncoming traffic, Siddiqui said, he jumped
into a taxi, which drove him only a few hundred metres before the driver balked
at involving himself in an operation by the security forces.
He said he ran on foot through an empty lot and ditches to
reach a marble factory, where a labourer agreed to drive him to Islamabad , the Pakistani
capital. Siddiqui, 33, sustained minor wounds and scratches. He has
registered a case with the police. The journalist has previously come under pressure for his
work, receiving a summons last year from the country’s Federal Investigation
Agency for posting tweets deemed to be critical of the military.
