(PPF/IFEX) – Mehmood Ali Khan Lodhi, a journalist working for “The News” and the government controlled Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), was picked up by intelligence agents in Lahore and interrogated for two days before being released on the night of 3 May 1999. According to Lodhi, the interrogators wanted to know details of his […]
(PPF/IFEX) – Mehmood Ali Khan Lodhi, a journalist working for “The News” and
the government controlled Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), was picked up
by intelligence agents in Lahore and interrogated for two days before being
released on the night of 3 May 1999. According to Lodhi, the interrogators
wanted to know details of his involvement with a British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) team producing a documentary on Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif’s family business in Pakistan.
Lodhi explained that he had clarified that the BBC had contacted him in
Lahore and that he gave them the address, telephone numbers and directions
to the house of Yousuf Aziz, Sharif’s estranged cousin. Lodhi said that the
interrogators were anxious to find the motives behind the documentary. He
added that during the making of the documentary on the prime minister, he
was receiving death threats for working with BBC.
Lodhi seems to have become embroiled in the internal politics of the prime
minister’s family. Lodhi is close to the cousins of the family that is
opposed to the prime minister. During Sharif’s first tenure, from 1990 to
1992, Lodhi was transferred by APP to Peshawar as punishment for reporting
on property disputes between the Aziz brothers and the prime minister. The
Punjab Union of Journalists (PUJ) and others in the journalist community
have condemned Lodhi’s arrest and declared that it is an attempt to harass
working journalists.
