Web Desk (LTN NEWS): The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has asked Pakistani officials to release journalist Jameel Farooqui “immediately and unconditionally” and to stop harassing him and fellow journalists Ilyas Samoo for their work.
Carlos Martinez de la Serna, who is in charge of CPJ’s program, said, “Pakistani authorities must stop their campaign of harassing and intimidating journalists as a way to punish them for their work.” “Authorities should release journalist Jameel Farooqui quickly and without conditions. They should also stop bothering him and another journalist, Ilyas Samoo, and let them do their jobs without interference.”
On Monday, Farooqui was taken into custody at the airport in Karachi. He works as an anchor for a privately owned TV station and runs a YouTube channel with about 120,000 subscribers.
Samoo was a reporter for a privately owned daily newspaper and the president of the local Bandar Press Club. On August 19, police in Thatta district arrested him, according to statements from two local press freedom groups and Latafullah Samoo, the journalist’s brother, who spoke by phone with CPJ.
Latafullah Samoo, who is his brother, said on Tuesday that a court had given bail to his brother earlier in the day and let him go.
A copy of the report, the CJP said in its statement, showed that Samoo was arrested in a case involving illegal weapons. His brother told the CJP that he thought the government was after Samoo because he wrote about flood-hit areas in the Thatta district. He also said that Samoo had gotten a threatening phone call and text message right before he was arrested, telling him to stop writing about floods.
Farooqui was arrested after he put a video about the Shahbaz Gill torture claims on his YouTube channel.
The group said that “the police departments in Islamabad and Sindh did not respond to CPJ’s email requests for comment.”
