Journalist sustains injuries after being attacked

Waqar Kiani claims men dressed in police uniforms beat him when he was stopped at a check post in Islamabad.

ISLAMABAD: An Islamabad based journalist was allegedly assaulted by police personnel in the Sector G/8 area of the capital on Saturday.

Waqar Kiani, working for local and international newspapers, was stopped by the police for security checking while he was driving to his house.

“Four persons wearing police uniforms stopped me near G-8 Markaz and started beating me... I have injuries in the back and on my face. They had come in a police van,” Kiani told Dawn.

The rescue services shifted the injured journalist to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital for treatment.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik took notice of the incident and sought a report from the Inspector General of the Islamabad Police.

Meanwhile, SSP Islamabad Tahir Alam said that initial investigation negates any involvement of police personnel or a vehicle in the incident.

An article published in British newspaper, the Guardian, last week revealed that in 2008 Kiani “was abducted, blindfolded, beaten and burned” when he came to Karachi. Kiani had been reporting on the “alleged cooperation between Pakistani and British intelligence in the detention and abuse of suspected militants.”

Earlier this month, an investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad was found dead after going missing from Islamabad a few days after he wrote an article for Asia Times Online which claimed that militants attacked PNS Mehran after their demand for the release of certain suspects was rejected.

A study by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) declared Pakistan the deadliest place for journalists with eight reporters killed this year.