(PPF/IFEX) – Saeed Sarbazi, senior sub-editor of “Business Recorder” daily newspaper and the joint secretary of the Karachi Press Club (KPC), returned home in the early hours of 23 September 2006, after being abducted three days earlier, allegedly by intelligence agents. According to Sarbazi, he was dropped from a truck, blind-folded, in a suburb of […]
(PPF/IFEX) – Saeed Sarbazi, senior sub-editor of “Business Recorder” daily newspaper and the joint secretary of the Karachi Press Club (KPC), returned home in the early hours of 23 September 2006, after being abducted three days earlier, allegedly by intelligence agents. According to Sarbazi, he was dropped from a truck, blind-folded, in a suburb of Karachi.
Talking to journalists at the KPC, Sarbazi said was on his way to the Club on 20 September when he was intercepted by several unidentified individuals who dragged him from his car into another vehicle and covered his face with his own shirt.
He said he told his abductors he was a journalist but they insisted he was a terrorist. He said he was interrogated about his personal and professional life and his connection to the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist organization. Sarbazi tried to explain that he had made telephone calls as part of his journalistic assignments after the killing of BLA leader Akbar Bugti in an army operation.
He said he was kept awake for almost three days and was not allowed to sit during that time andthat he was brutally beaten to extract information, which he did not have. He said that his blindfold was taken off only when he was fed and that, after three days, he was told they had picked up the “wrong man”.
The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) described the treatment meted out to Sarbazi as the “worst form of torture” and appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take notice of the torture inflicted upon Sarbazi by intelligence agents, as well as the murder of the six-year old brother of slain journalist Hayatullah Khan.
The PFUJ statement said that Sarbazi was having problems in his neck and in passing urine. Sarbazi informed the PFUJ that his abductors kicked him so badly on his back and in the stomach that he fainted. The PFUJ statement added that Sarbazi, who was recovering from hepatitis-C, was not given his medication during his detention, which has resulted in a deterioration of his medical condition.
