WION’s Pakistan correspondent on Wednesday shared a tweet from Dawn correspondent Cyril Almeida’s account saying that he had escaped abduction at the hands of 10-12 people who tried pulling him out of a cab.
Taha Siddiqui tweeted that he was on his way to the airport when he was nearly abducted. He is now at the police station where he says he is safe.
In May 2017, Siddqui had filed a writ petition with the Islamabad high court alleging harassment by the country’s Federal Investigation Agency.
The petition says the FIA called Siddiqui, demanding that he appear before it at FIA headquarters for interrogation.
When Siddiqui asked the FIA why, he was not given a concrete answer.
But the FIA hinted that it wished to question him about his reporting.
When Siddiqui replied that his work was in the public domain and that any questions could be asked over the phone, the FIA told Siddiqui in a threatening tone and voice that it would “be better” for him to appear before it.
In 2016, Almeida had written an editorial piece in The Dawn titled ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’ where he said that instead of taking action against terrorist groups, the government and the country’s military was lecturing journalists. Almeida was subsequently banned from leaving the country.
The editorial titled ‘How to Lose Friends And Alienate People’ said the government and the military instead of taking actions against Azhar and Saeed was lecturing the press. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Azhar and Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, roam freely in Pakistan and are believed to have the protection of the military.