ISLAMABAD: Prominent Pakistani human rights activists Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Ali Wazir have been remanded into police custody for three days, a court order read on Monday, a day after the Islamabad police booked them for criminal intimidation and rioting among several other offenses. 

Mazari-Hazir and Wazir, co-founder of a Pashtun ethnic rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), among other PTM members violated an agreement with the local administration and marched ahead from an area designated for Friday’s PTM rally at Tarnol Chowk on GT Road, according to the police complaint. The participants attacked the police when they were stopped from marching toward Islamabad, and forcibly blocked the GT Road for traffic. 

The police produced Mazari-Hazir and Wazir before an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Islamabad on Monday, where the prosecution requested Judge Abual Hasnat Muhammad Zulqarnain for a 10-day physical remand of the accused. But the judge granted a three-day remand. 

“Three-days physical custody of accused is allowed specifically under Section 21 (e) of ATA, (Anti-Terrorism Act), 1997, with the direction to the investigating officer to submit progress report of investigation on the next date,” the court order read. 

The court directed the police to again produce the accused before it on August 24. 

Ahsan Pirzada, Mazari-Hazir’s lawyer, said she was in “good spirit” and would fight out the case against her. 

“She is in very good spirit & will fight this one out, as she has done in the past, with dignity & courage,” Pirzada said on X messaging platform. 

The arrests of Mazari-Hazir and Wazir came two days after videos widely circulating on social media showed the former addressing the PTM rally and criticizing the Pakistani military over enforced abductions. The army denies the allegations. 

Founded in 2014, the PTM campaigns against alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Pashtuns and other ethnic minorities. Many of its leaders have faced long incarcerations over the years. Though Mazari-Hazir is not formally a member of the group, she has addressed its gatherings as one of the more prominent voices in the country against enforced disappearances. 

Her arrest drew concerns from national and international rights bodies, including Amnesty International, over what they called a growing number of arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances of political and rights activists in Pakistan.