{"id":30142,"date":"2019-01-22T16:22:41","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T16:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30142"},"modified":"2019-01-22T16:22:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T16:22:41","slug":"pashtun-rights-activist-alamzeb-mehsud-arrested-in-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30142","title":{"rendered":"Pashtun rights activist Alamzeb Mehsud arrested in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013<\/strong> A prominent Pashtun rights activist has been presented in a Pakistani court after being arrested on charges of rioting and inciting hatred at a protest demonstration, rights activists say.<\/p>\n

Alamzeb Mehsud, 26, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan<\/a>‘s largest city, on Monday evening, video footage taken by activists from the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) showed.<\/p>\n

Mehsud’s vehicle was intercepted by police on a busy thoroughfare, with armed police officers forcing him to disembark and be taken into custody, the footage showed. An unidentified man, wearing plain clothes, was seen waving a pistol at Mehsud in the footage.<\/p>\n

“He was presented in court today [Tuesday] and the court has ordered he be kept in police custody for four days,” said Mohsin Dawar, a PTM leader and member of parliament.<\/p>\n

Since early 2018, the PTM has organised dozens of mass protests against rights abuses<\/a> allegedly committed by the Pakistani military in its war against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its allies.<\/p>\n

The country has been battling the Pakistan\u00a0<\/span>Taliban<\/span>, an umbrella organisation of armed groups targeting the state and aiming to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law, since 2007.<\/p>\n

A series of military operations since 2014 has seen the group displaced from its erstwhile headquarters in the country’s northwest and pushed into neighbouring Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Violence has dropped drastically, although sporadic large casualty attacks targeting civilians and security forces still occur.<\/p>\n

The PTM and other rights groups allege<\/a> the military has carried out a campaign of thousands of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings as part of its war against the TTP.<\/p>\n

Mehsud, a founding member of the group, has been instrumental in gathering data on missing persons and victims of landmines<\/a> in the northwest tribal districts, where the military’s fight was focussed.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, images from his court appearance showed Mehsud in handcuffs, his face hooded. He has been charged under anti-terrorism laws with inciting a riot, defamation and “promoting enmity between different groups”, according to the police report filed on his arrest.<\/p>\n

On the weekend, Mehsud had addressed a PTM-organised rally of hundreds of protesters in Karachi, repeating the group’s calls for justice to be done for victims of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n

The police report named him and 15 others, including Ali Wazir, a PTM leader who is also a member of parliament, in the case.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International, a UK-based rights organisation, said it was “concerned” after news of the arrest broke.<\/p>\n

\n

We are concerned about reports of the disappearance of PTM activist Alamzeb Mehsud. His whereabouts must be disclosed immediately. Either produce him in court or release him without delay.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Amnesty International South Asia (@amnestysasia) January 21, 2019<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Freedom of peaceful assembly must be protected. Activists must never be attacked,” the group said in a tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The PTM has been subject to widespread repression<\/a> since it launched its movement last year, with leaders regularly named in treason and rioting cases, and coverage of its rallies all but blacked out on local news media.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dawar, the member of parliament, said the group was undeterred by the government’s actions against them.<\/p>\n

“If they think that [police cases] and arrests will stop the PTM, they are mistaken,” he told Al Jazeera. “They can put as much pressure as they want, we will stick to our demands.”<\/p>\n

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeera’s digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013 A prominent Pashtun rights activist has been presented in a Pakistani court after being arrested on charges of rioting and inciting hatred at a protest demonstration, rights activists say. Alamzeb Mehsud, 26, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, on Monday evening, video footage taken by activists from the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}