ISLAMABAD: Matiullah Jan, a prominent Pakistani reporter and television anchor who was abducted in Islamabad on Tuesday said on Wednesday he was “back home safe.”
Jan is a well-known critic of the Pakistani security establishment, and has complained in the past of having been intimidated by authorities. On Tuesday, he was abducted by plainclothes abductors and gunmen from outside the school where his wife is employed.
The country’s information minister said he was sure Jan had been “abducted” but police, military and other government agencies have not yet commented on his disappearance.
“I am back home safe & sound. God has been kind to me & my family,” Jan wrote on Twitter. “I am grateful to friends, national & int. journalist community, political parties, social media & rights activists, lawyers bodies, the judiciary for their quick response which made it possible.”
I am back home safe & sound. God has been kind to me & my family. I am grateful to friends, national & int. journalist community, political parties, social media & rights activists, lawyers bodies, the judiciary for their quick response which made it possible.
— Matiullah Jan (@Matiullahjan919) July 22, 2020
Jan has as yet given no details of the nearly 12 hours in which he was missing.
Shahid Akbar Abbasi, Jan’s younger brother and a lawyer in Islamabad, told Arab News Jan’s wife had called him on Tuesday morning and said her husband had been “kidnapped” from outside the school where she works.
In a petition filed before the Islamabad High Court, Abbasi said Jan’s wife feared he had been “picked up by some unknown persons” after his car was found near her workplace with the windows open and the key in the ignition.
“Elder brother Matiullah Jan … was coming to pick his spouse from Government School G-6/3. However the spouse found him missing when she came out from the school,” the court petition filed by Abbasi says. “The car was unlocked, the windows were open, the keys were inside.”
CCTV footage widely shared on social media, but which Arab News could not independently verify, showed Jan’s vehicle being cornered by five vehicles, three of them unmarked, one with police markings and the other an ambulance. Men in plain clothes, some of them armed, and some in elite police uniforms, then forcefully bundled Jan into a car. One clip showed him hurling his cellphone into the school, after which one of the gunmen asked a teacher to retrieve the phone and hand it over, which she did.
Jan is also facing a contempt of court case for a Twitter post critical of Supreme Court judges, and is due to appear in court today, Wednesday.
“My husband had told me that he could be arrested in the case, but we never expected a kidnapping,” Kaneez Sughra, the wife of 51-year-old Matiullah Jan, told Reuters.
