Pakistani court issues show-cause notice over ‘misuse of power’ in journalist arrest case

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday issued a show-cause notice to the cybercrime wing of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for “misuse of power” in a case relating to last week’s arrest of journalist Mohsin Baig, local media reported.
An FIA team raided the Baig’s home and arrested him on February 16 after a dramatic scuffle, during which the journalist fired shots at the police and hit one of the officers in the head with the weapon, and injured him.
Baig was arrested on a defamation complaint filed by Pakistani communications minister Murad Saeed. Hours after the arrest, Additional Sessions Judge Islamabad West Zafar Iqbal, while hearing a petition against his detention, declared the FIA raid “illegal,” saying it was carried out by “irrelevant persons who were not authorized to do so.”
On Monday, IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah heard a petition filed by Baig’s wife against the FIA raid and the detention of her husband. The court observed the FIA was continuously “misusing power on the directives of public office holders,” Geo News reported.
“Such a role by an agency or the state in a democratic country is not tolerable,” the report quoted Chief Justice Minallah as saying. “[The court] won’t let the FIA become a rogue agency.”
FIA laws demanded that in case of a complaint the agency “first conduct an inquiry but you didn’t abide by it because the complaint was filed by a minister,” the judge noted.
Baig, owner and editor-in-chief of news outlet Online and the Urdu-language Daily Jinnah newspaper, was arrested days after he appeared on a TV talk show in which he suggested that Prime Minister Imran Khan had showed favoritism by granting an award to a government minister, Murad Saeed, with whom he has a close friendship.
The judge asked FIA officials why three other participants of the show were not arrested who also spoke on the same topic. The court ordered the FIA cybercrime wing director to submit an affidavit, explaining it should not take action against him for the “misuse of power.”
It issued a show-cause notice to the FIA cybercrime wing director and adjourned the hearing till February 24.
Baig’s arrest drew condemnation from Pakistani journalists on social media, with dozens also gathering outside Baig’s media house to express solidarity with him.
Pakistan has long been an unsafe country for journalists. In 2020, it ranked ninth on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual Global Impunity Index, which assesses countries where journalists are regularly killed and the assailants go scot-free.