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ISI ordered journalist's murder - More US Propaganda?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/world/asia/05pakistan.html?_r=2

A Pakistani reporter, Waqar Kiani, who works for the British newspaper The Guardian, was beaten in the capital after Mr. Shahzad’s death with wooden batons and a rubber whip, by men who said: “You want to be a hero. We’ll make you a hero,” the newspaper reported. Mr. Kiani had just published an account of his abduction two years earlier at the hands of intelligence agents.

WOW! So do Pakistanis atleast believe their agencies are trying to control their media and in turn what they think? Or is that a conspiracy too?

No he is talking about those who blindly follow US and its media.

India has been commenting on Pakistan's system that lacks accountability and hence poses a great threat to neighborhood for a loooong time before the western media picked up.

Its people like him, who need to stop following the uniform blindly. But my experience is most of these blind followers are direct beneficiaries of this system, typically from army families. So their bias is personal.
 
Will USA will like to tell us who killed the journalist in India who was writing a book on underworld with the help of SALEEM SHAZAD
 
Self appointed investigative trolls spreading false propaganda should be ordained with such fate always!
 
If even a single word of this is true, this man wouldn't be writing it in the news paper..his abductors can easily identify him from his graphic explanation and abduct him once again..he is another bluff master journalist which are dime a dozen in Pakistan.


Death country

3487038733_Syed-Saleem-Shahzad_2.jpg

Victim of impunity: Saleem Shahzad
A Pakistani journalist-writer about how ISI agents tortured him


By Umar Cheema/Islamabad

Syed Saleem Shahzad paid with his life for exposing what Pakistani authorities did not want people to hear. An investigative reporter for Asia Times Online, he went missing a few days after writing an article that said al Qaeda elements had penetrated Pakistan’s navy and that a military crackdown on them had precipitated the May 22 terrorist attack on a Karachi naval base. Saleem’s body was found near Islamabad on May 30.

His killing has left Pakistani journalists in shock. I couldn’t sleep the night his death was confirmed. He had been tortured. It reminded me of that chilly night on September 4 when I was abducted by government agents. A thought that kept haunting me at Saleem’s funeral was: it could have been me. Fellow journalists told me I was lucky to get a lease on life that Saleem was denied.


The first person that came to my mind after my abduction was my two-year-old son, Adil. Journalists in Pakistan do not have an institutionalised social security system—those killed in the line of duty leave their families at the mercy of a weak economy.
My abductors came in police uniforms, to arrest me on a false charge of murder. They gagged and handcuffed me. I could not inform anybody of my whereabouts, not even my friends whom I had dropped off 15 minutes before. My cell phone was taken away.

I had written articles about the corrupt practices of high-ranking officials and criticising the army and intelligence agencies. When they were published, the Inter-Services Intelligence sent messages that were subtle threats. But abduction was the last thing I expected.


My captors took me to an abandoned house, stripped me and tortured me with a whip and wooden rod. I asked the man who was flogging me what my crime was. Another man answered: “Your reporting has upset the government.”

I did not apologise because I had committed no crime. I just prayed, “Oh God, why am I being punished?” The ringleader said: “If you can’t avoid rape, enjoy it.” He addressed me in abusive language. “Have you ever been tortured before?” he asked. “No,” I said. He replied: “These marks will stay with you forever, as a reminder never to defy the authorities.”

They tortured me for 25 minutes, shaved my head, eyebrows and moustache, and filmed and photographed my naked body. I was dumped about 100 miles from Islamabad and ?warned not to speak up.

Terrible months followed. I wouldn’t go jogging, fearing that I would be picked up again and never return. Now I live in in self-imposed house arrest. I have been chased a number of times after the incident. My son asks me questions about my attackers that I don’t answer. I don’t want to sow hatred in his mind.

I wondered if Saleem, too, was thinking about his children when he went missing. He had left Karachi, his hometown, after receiving death threats. He settled with his wife and three children in Islamabad, from where he went on reporting trips to tribal areas. Tahir Ali, a mutual friend, would ask him: “Don’t you feel scared in the tribal areas?” Saleem would smile: “Death could come even in Islamabad.”

Saleem’s killing is a terrifying reminder to Pakistani journalists. Five scribes have been killed in the country in 2011. Journalists are shot like stray dogs in Pakistan. They are easy targets because their assassins are people in power.

When Daniel Pearl was murdered by militants in Karachi in 2002, his case was prosecuted and four accomplices to the crime were sentenced. It happened only because he was an American. No organisation is powerful enough to get the government to bring Saleem’s killers to justice. Those who are speaking up for Saleem are being intimidated.

Pakistan’s journalists offer a ray of hope to its citizens. People trust them. But this trust will be eroded if journalists are bullied into walking away from the truth. News organisations around the world should join hands to seek justice for Saleem.
An award for investigative journalists should be instituted in his honour, as was done for Daniel Pearl. Immortalising Saleem will be the strongest message to his killers
.

Death country
 
This is too much , may backfire :tdown:



The ISI has contacted Sethi, Haider and other journalists. Najam Sethi, Hamid Mir, Ejaz Haider banned from appearing in PTV. Petition filed against them and related newspapers , TV channels in the Supreme court. Sardar Muhammad Ghazi, a lawyer who served as deputy attorney general under the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf, has filed a 20-page petition called them the journalists are intent on allowing India to "expand [its] boundaries" and are influenced by the CIA , RAW and Mossad. Sethi says he was accused of being KGB , CIA , RAW and Mossad agents through out his life at different times.


Shahzad , Waqar Kiani , Cheema , Najam Sethi , Hamid Mir , Haider the list going on.






Journalists in Pakistan Under Threat from ISI - TIME

Risky Business: When Pakistani Journalists Take On the ISI
By Omar Waraich / Islamabad

Najam Sethi is no stranger to official harassment and death threats. Since the 1970s, the prominent Pakistani journalist has been charged with treason three times. He has been held incommunicado and even tortured. In recent years, his name has appeared on hit lists drawn up by those enraged by his outspoken opposition to religious militancy. For the past two years, Sethi and his family have been forced to live under police protection.

The hostile attention has not abandoned him. Since the May 1 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Sethi and other leading Pakistani journalists have come under intense pressure from Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country's most powerful intelligence agency. With top spies having made their fury plain in private, the journalists now face a public campaign of intimidation bent on silencing them and holding them up as traitors.


The latest troubles started, Sethi says, when he began to ask tough questions about the al-Qaeda leader's presence in Abbottabad, a garrison town a three hours' drive from the capital, Islamabad. On his television show and in his editorials, Sethi demanded to know why the military had failed to discover bin Laden's presence and whether it may have been hiding him. "My view was that they were either incompetent or complicit and had to answer the charges," he says.


Sethi's questions grew more pointed after the corpse of fellow journalist Saleem Shahzad was discovered on May 31, three days after Shahzad mysteriously disappeared. Suspicions immediately fell on the ISI. As first reported on TIME.com, Shahzad told human-rights campaigners that he had earlier been threatened by the ISI. "This isn't al-Qaeda's style," Sethi told his viewers, adding that terrorists are keen to publicize the killings they author.

According to the official autopsy, some 15 marks of torture were found on Shahzad's body, heightening the earlier suspicions. Torture, Sethi explained to his viewers, was an interrogation technique long favored by Pakistan's police and intelligence agencies. He elaborated by drawing on his own grim experiences: when Sethi was picked up in 1999 for having accused the sitting government of corruption, he was hooded and beaten.

During the ordeal, Sethi recalled, "I stopped breathing and thought I was going to die." He suffered a heart attack before his tormentors relented. Shahzad's case may have been similar, Sethi suggested to his viewers at the end of May, just hours after Shahzad's body was retrieved. The slain journalist's abductors may have wanted to only torture him, but in the process, they ended up taking his life before they realized they had gone too far.


The speculation struck a raw nerve at the ISI's headquarters in Islamabad. For decades, the ISI has evaded much public scrutiny. Human-rights groups accuse it of rigging elections, destabilizing governments, boosting jihadist proxies, kidnapping and carrying out extrajudicial executions. Discreetly, many Pakistanis make the same charges. But the murder of Shahzad marks a turning point: now the allegations are being made in the mainstream media, adding to a recent wave of unprecedented criticism of the military.


A striking example is a bluntly worded and widely read column by Ejaz Haider, a defense specialist who writes for several newspapers. "The ISI, the agency that you head, is being accused of Saleem's murder," Haider wrote in the op-ed that was cast as an open letter to ISI chief Lieut. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha. "You must know that the ISI is widely reviled and dreaded at home. For an agency that was set up primarily for strategic intelligence, this is quite an achievement."


The ISI denies that it ever threatened Shahzad or was involved in the kidnapping or killing of the journalist. The ISI has contacted Sethi, Haider and other journalists whom it feels have unfairly represented the spy agency.

"For what I've been saying since the bin Laden raid, I have incurred the wrath of the ISI," says Sethi. "The agency has officially expressed its anger and annoyance and irritation." A third journalist, Hamid Mir, a political-talk-show host, goes further. The ISI, Mir alleges, recently approached him to ask that he cease his endorsement of the current civilian government. "I have refused to extend my support to the armed forces' interference in politics," he says. "That's why they're against me."


For their comments about the military establishment, the three journalists could soon find themselves appearing before the Supreme Court. Sardar Muhammad Ghazi, a lawyer who served as deputy attorney general under the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf, has filed a 20-page petition calling on the court to stop them from disparaging the army and the ISI and to declare that such criticisms will not be tolerated and should lead to the shutdown of the offending television channel and newspaper. "These people are criticizing my armed forces," Ghazi says indignantly. "They sit and castigate the army. I can't tolerate it. There should be somebody who should come forward and say the media should be controlled." In the petition, he accuses Sethi, Haider and Mir of being "out to promote the foreign agenda to destabilize and denuclearize Pakistan." He alleges that the journalists are intent on allowing India to "expand [its] boundaries" and are influenced by the American, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies.

Ghazi insists he did not submit the court petition at anyone's request. "It's purely in my individual capacity as a lawyer," he says. Haider and Mir suspect otherwise. "My sense now is that, given this petition, they have taken a decision to put some kind of pressure," Haider says, referring to the ISI. It is unclear whether Ghazi's petition will make it to court. While some lawyers doubt the prospect, the petitioner says his case is in line to be heard.

But Ghazi's petition may be merely one avenue of pressure. On the Web, the journalists are denounced as "traitors" and "fifth columnists." One pro-army website superimposed a blue Star of David on Haider's forehead in an attempt to cast him as an agent of Israeli intelligence. A widely circulated text message attacks Sethi and members of his family, insinuating that they are in the pay of the U.S. The journalists have little doubt as to the provenance of the electronic abuse. "This is now coming from the ISI's cybertrolls and ghost warriors," says Haider.


Sethi says he has received similar labels throughout his career. "When I was at college, we used to be called KGB agents," he says, recalling his days as a leftist student activist. "When I've favored peaceful relations [with India], I've been called a RAW agent," he adds, referring to New Delhi's external intelligence agency. And for advocating good relations with the U.S. and supporting the fight against Islamist militancy, he's been called a CIA agent.

The three journalists have also been discreetly banned from state-run media. When a prominent presenter at Pakistan Television (PTV) — the state-owned channel, which continues to enjoy a monopoly in rural areas where there is no cable penetration — tried to interview Haider for his analysis, the host of the show was told that the journalist was not allowed to appear on the air. The PTV presenter says Sethi and Mir are also banned.

"The past two months have been rough," says Sethi with a sigh. "It's been one thing after the next." In April, Sethi's security detail was increased after he was informed of a fresh but unexplained terrorist threat against him and his family. "According to a credible intelligence report," read a fax from the Interior Ministry to top police and intelligence officials, "terrorists are likely to attack Najam Sethi and his family." And despite the pressure, the veteran reporter can sound phlegmatic about it all, accepting it as a burden he's prepared to bear. "When you challenge corruption or military arbitrariness or extremism, and you don't stop doing it, you pay the price," he says.
 
these journalists should be exposed they are taking money from India and America and it is a well known fact America has invested 5 million Dollars in Pakistani Media
 
Many sane intellactuals have already stopped speaking in news channels from few months.. after death threats to sherry rahman and pervez hoodbouy, they are not particiating in talk shows any more... I feel for sethi and ejaz Haider... they are not hypocrats like few others....

My advise ; Jaan hai to jahan hai... (stay back, dont risk ur life and ur families life)
 
Many sane intellactuals have already stopped speaking in news channels from few months.. after death threats to sherry rahman and pervez hoodbouy, they are not particiating in talk shows any more... I feel for sethi and ejaz Haider... they are not hypocrats like few others....

My advise ; Jaan hai to jahan hai... (stay back, dont risk ur life and ur families life)

I think so.

They should think about their lives and their families. If some people kill the journalists (which may happen as they fear) will result nothing. No one can sue the culprits.




Save your lives first.
 
these journalists should be exposed they are taking money from India and America and it is a well known fact America has invested 5 million Dollars in Pakistani Media

5 million dollars not a small amount for Shahzad , Waqar Kiani , Cheema , Najam Sethi , Hamid Mir , Haider etc but they should think about their family and lives. What can they do with the money if they are not alive.
 
these journalists should be exposed they are taking money from India and America and it is a well known fact America has invested 5 million Dollars in Pakistani Media

there is no proof of t .... :tdown:
 
Hilarious stuff from the Time magazine! The ISI does not contact anyone like that, & let the whole world find out about that. The ISI is silent like a shadow, people might get suspicious of the ISI monitoring them, but they remain behind the shadows & operate extremely discreetly. They never publicly make announcements, threatening statements, or go after anyone. Propaganda after propaganda! While the ISI is no angel, Pakistani people are not gullible, & know what the intentions of these news reports are.
 
Hilarious stuff from the Time magazine! The ISI does not contact anyone like that, & let the whole world find out about that. The ISI is silent like a shadow, people might get suspicious of the ISI monitoring them, but they remain behind the shadows & operate extremely discreetly. They never publicly make announcements, threatening statements, or go after anyone. Propaganda after propaganda! While the ISI is no angel, Pakistani people are not gullible, & know what the intentions of these news reports are.

You know better than the people whom ISI contacted.


The ISI has contacted Sethi, Haider and other journalists whom it feels have unfairly represented the spy agency. "For what I've been saying since the bin Laden raid, I have incurred the wrath of the ISI," says Sethi. "The agency has officially expressed its anger and annoyance and irritation." A third journalist, Hamid Mir, a political-talk-show host, goes further. The ISI, Mir alleges, recently approached him to ask that he cease his endorsement of the current civilian government. "I have refused to extend my support to the armed forces' interference in politics," he says. "That's why they're against me."
 
these journalists should be exposed they are taking money from India and America and it is a well known fact America has invested 5 million Dollars in Pakistani Media

You can find a 100 excuses for all ill-doings of your military and intelligence, but the longer it takes for the Pakistanis to realize the truth, the more stronger the hold of the extremists will materialize in the military and administration of Pakistan, which these journalists are/were trying to expose.
 
You know better than the people whom ISI contacted.


The ISI has contacted Sethi, Haider and other journalists whom it feels have unfairly represented the spy agency. "For what I've been saying since the bin Laden raid, I have incurred the wrath of the ISI," says Sethi. "The agency has officially expressed its anger and annoyance and irritation." A third journalist, Hamid Mir, a political-talk-show host, goes further. The ISI, Mir alleges, recently approached him to ask that he cease his endorsement of the current civilian government. "I have refused to extend my support to the armed forces' interference in politics," he says. "That's why they're against me."

ISI doesn't contact anyone publicly & says "we're the ISI, stop talking against us"; just tracks them very discreetly, without letting people know. People can have a suspicion that the ISI is on their tail, but the ISI is discreet, & looms over them like a shadow. The journalists are just scared (understandably) after what happened to Saleem Shahzad, but if someone calls Najam Sethi, Hamid Mir on their phone, & threatens them; doesn't necessarily mean it's the ISI. You clearly don't understand how the ISI works.
 

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