(RSF/IFEX) – On 26 August 2002, RSF protested a military employee’s filing of a complaint against journalist Shaheen Sehbai with the Rawalpindi police on 21 August. Sehbai is editor of the online newspaper “South Asia Tribune”. He left Pakistan in March following alleged “government pressure” and now lives in the United States. The complaint accuses […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 26 August 2002, RSF protested a military employee’s filing of a complaint against journalist Shaheen Sehbai with the Rawalpindi police on 21 August. Sehbai is editor of the online newspaper “South Asia Tribune”. He left Pakistan in March following alleged “government pressure” and now lives in the United States. The complaint accuses Sehbai of committing a “dacoity”, or burglary, in Pakistan in February 2001.
“The harassment of Shaheen Sehbai is reaching proportions bordering on the ridiculous,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Federal Interior Minister Moin-ud-Din Haider. “It is high time for the Pakistani government to stop responding with intimidation or defamation against those who exercise their right to inform,” Ménard added, while calling on the authorities to dismiss the complaint, which is tantamount to a sentence of indefinite banishment abroad.
Khalid Hijazi, an employee at army headquarters, filed the complaint with the Rawalpindi police on 21 August. He is Sehbai’s cousin’s ex-husband. The complaint alleges that Sehbai carried out an “armed robbery” in Hijazi’s home on 22 February 2001.
Sehbai left Pakistan in March 2002 after resigning as editor of the English-language daily newspaper “The News”. At the time, RSF called on the information minister to conduct an inquiry into the “government pressure” that led Sehbai to resign. In July, Sehbai launched an online investigative newspaper in Washington called the “South Asia Tribune” (www.satribune.com), in which he has reported on allegations of corruption and human rights violations by the government of Pervez Musharraf.
Sehbai told RSF that the burglary accusation was a “complete fabrication” by the military and that police searched the home of several of his family members on 21 August. He said members of his family had also been harassed by men in uniform.
