Imran Riaz Khan arrested again

LAHORE: Renowned journalist Imran Riaz Khan has once again been arrested from his house in Lahore, his brother said.

This comes less than five months after the journalist returned home after a nearly four-month long disappearance during which his whereabouts were unknown.

“They have picked up my brother, it’s been seven hours,” his brother Usman Riaz Khan, who is also a journalist, said on X early on Friday morning.

“A cloth was placed over his head and he was dragged away.” He said he hoped Riaz would be presented before a court and due process followed.

Imran Riaz was taken into custody from a private housing society near Quaid-e-Azam Industrial Area in Lahore late on Thursday night. Footage of police vans outside his house and a large number of personnel entering were shared on social media.

Riaz, who has more than 5.5 million followers on X, is a staunch supporter of jailed former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan.

The journalist had vehemently criticized state institutions after Imran Khan was removed from power in April 2022. He went missing in May last and returned home in September, with authorities giving no indication of where he had been.

Imran Riaz was arrested hours after the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cybercrime Wing summoned him amid probe of the anti-judiciary campaign on social media platforms.

In an X post following the FIA summons, Riaz’s lawyer Mian Ali Ashfaq said his client had responded to the agency’s notice.

“Such notices have come to dozens of journalists across Pakistan and after answering the first notice, Imran Riaz Khan has also answered this second notice,” the lawyer said.  “More than two dozen such cases have been dismissed, this one will also be dismissed.”