IPU admits Swati’s complaint against security officials: PTI

Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Committee on Human Rights has admitted Senator Azam Khan Swati’s complaint against senior officials of security forces including former army chief General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said quoting official document.

“IPU Committee on Human Rights admitted Senator Azam Khan Swati case’s at its 170th session (Geneva, 21 January to 2 February 2023),” the party’s official Twitter handle read on Tuesday.

In the complaint, the PTI senator alleged that he and several other high-ranking PTI officials were persecuted by the PML-N-led government and “the security sector leadership” since the removal of former prime minister Imran Khan from power in April last year.

“The complainant reports that, during the night of 13 October 2022, a few hours after publishing a tweet criticising the military for meddling in politics, Mr Swati was abducted by a group of armed men in plain clothes claiming to belong to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), who stormed his residence and submitted him to severe beatings in front of his family before covering his head in a black cloth and taking him to an unknown location in their vehicle: where he was tortured until he lost consciousness,” according to the complaint shared by PTI on its handle.

Also read: IHC moved for Swati’s bail cancellation

According to the complainant, after Swati was released on bail, he started to receive intimidating messages from people claiming to work for intelligence agencies who pressured him to stay silent and desist from exposing the alleged human rights violations that he had endured.

“The complainant reports that; as Mr Swati refused to back down, his wife and daughter received an objectionable video recording of Mr Swati and his wife. The complainant alleges that the State had violated Mr Swati's rights to privacy by secretly recording the video and leaking it to his wife and daughter; causing him and his entire family much distress.”

The ICU committee noted that the complaint concerns an incumbent member of parliament at the time of the alleged violations.

“Notes further that the complaint concerns allegations of enforced disappearance, torture, ill-treatment and other acts of violence, threats: acts of intimidation, arbitrary arrest and detention, inhumane conditions of detention, lack of due process in proceedings against parliamentarians, lack of due process at the investigation stage, violation of freedom of opinion and expression.”