ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has booked Ahmed Waqas Janjua, international media coordinator of former prime minister Imran Khan’s party, under the country’s cybercrime law, a senior party member said on Tuesday.
Janjua was “abducted” from his home this month by plainclothes officers, prompting his wife to petition a high court for his recovery. He was later presented before an anti-terrorism court and was remanded into police custody for seven days.
A police report filed last week quoted Janjua as saying during interrogation that “we [social media team of Khan’s party] have been damaging the country daily with the help of internal and external forces, and for it, an anti-state narrative is built daily on social media to damage the country’s sovereignty, integrity and freedom.”
While it was unclear under what conditions Janjua provided the so-called confession, Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari, ex-PM Khan’s key adviser on media, said this was a “fake confession” and could not work in a court of law.
“Another case on Ahmed Janjua has been lodged by using the PECA (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act) Act,” Bukhari said in an X post on Tuesday. “This and many other cases have been placed on media & social media teams is a perfect case study of how a severe crackdown is taking place on innocent Pakistanis.”
The PECA law aims to address cybercrimes and regulate electronic communications, covering offences like unauthorized access to data, cyber terrorism, and the dissemination of false information. The law is controversial due to concerns over its impact on freedom of speech, the potential for abuse of power by law enforcement and its broad definitions, which critics argue can be used to suppress dissent and target journalists and opposition parties.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party says it has been facing a widening crackdown in recent months, which has included bans on holding rallies and arrests of party leaders and supporters. This month, the PTI’s Information Secretary Raoof Hassan was arrested from the party’s Islamabad office and remanded in police custody for two days on Tuesday.
On Saturday, the Pakistani government formed a joint investigation team (JIT) under PECA law 2016 to probe individuals accused of “spreading chaos” in the country through a “malicious social media campaign.” The development came after a Pakistani military spokesman, in a veiled reference to Khan’s PTI party, accused “digital terrorists” of making the military’s anti-militancy efforts controversial on social media platforms.
Last week, the federal government announced it would move to ban the PTI over involvement in anti-government and anti-military riots last year, for leaking state secrets and for receiving illegal foreign funding. Khan and the PTI say all charges against them are motivated to keep them out of politics and dent their popularity.
Khan has been in jail since August last year, even though all four convictions handed down to him ahead of a parliamentary election in February have either been suspended or overturned.
After being acquitted on the last of those four convictions, authorities rearrested Khan and his wife in an old corruption case on charges of selling state gifts unlawfully. He also faces an accusation of inciting his supporters to attack military installations in May last year. Khan denies all the accusations.
His party secured the largest number of seats in parliament in the February general election despite what Khan’s party says is a military-backed crackdown that aims to keep him out of power. It also won nearly two dozen extra parliament seats in a court ruling last week.
Khan blames his 2022 ouster in a no-confidence vote on Pakistan’s powerful army generals after he fell out with them, a charge the army denies.
