The News reporter tortured, humiliated after abduction: Ansar Abbassi is Next

[insaftak]

ISLAMABAD: Umer Cheema, reporter of The News Investigation Cell was tortured and humiliated during 6-hour captivity after abduction by unidentified men from Islamabad on Saturday. Giving account of the events of abduction and torture following his release, Umer Cheema said he was picked up by some unknown men in police uniforms from Islamabad Sector I-8 when he was returning home early in the morning at Sehri time and taken to an unknown place at 45 to 50 minutes drive. He said he was heading home in his car after meeting with friends. When he reached Sector I-8, a Land Cruiser blocked his way and pulled over in front of his car while a white Toyota came and parked right behind. “A few unknown men wearing uniforms of Elite Force came up to me, saying I crushed a man at Zero Point and drove off and then these men forcibly took me along with them,” Umer Cheema said. He said the men covered his face and took him to a building at 45 to 50 minutes drive. “I was held in illegal captivity for 6 hours during which I was continuously tortured and humiliated in nude. They stripped me out of my clothes, hanged me upside down and shaved off my head and moustaches,” the senior reporter of the country’s leading English daily recounted. Umer Cheema quoted the captors as saying: “Do you intend to have Martial Law imposed in the country by publishing anti-government reports?” He said the captors warned: “Stop writing against the government, if you cannot bear this torture and that Ansar Abbasi will be next target if I failed to stop.” They were also aware of my arriving in Gujranwala, Umer Cheema added.

Umar cheema has wrote many articles exposing corruption and incompetency of gov't/Pak Fauj.

Disgraceful stuff.

[Atif]

He is lucky to be alive by the sounds of it...there are some sick people around the world.

[insaftak]

looks like pakistani secret agencies were behind torturing this guy.

http://pkpolitics.com/2010/09/06/dun...eptember-2010/

keep up the good work umar cheema, the tyrants will come down one day.

[Golden arm]

well whatever the kidnappers said to umar it looks like, its been done by Rehman Malik Mafia.
they said to him repeatedly : tum marshal law dobara laana chahetei ho

[insaftak]

according to Nawaz Sharif, Umar cheema told him that it was ISI.

http://pkaffairs.com/Play_Show_Dunya...ber_2010_10736

Shameful stuff. really.

[FastBowler]

I don't believe it. Typically trying to humiliate the Military and ISI.

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by FastBowler I don't believe it. Typically trying to humiliate the Military and ISI.

you are right our army is full of Farishtays

[GLORY OF '92]

Originally Posted by insaftak you are right our army is full of Farishtays

Please stop posting your anti army bs everywhere.

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by GLORY OF '92 Please stop posting your anti army bs everywhere.

BS.

Bro, I just posted a video of army torturing a civilian.

Don't shoot The messenger.

[Foozee]

Originally Posted by insaftak BS. Bro, I just posted a video of army torturing a civilian. Don't shoot The messenger.

This is Spartaaahh!!

[chacha_cricket]

Originally Posted by insaftak you are right our army is full of Farishtays

tumhare b yehe haal hona chahe

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by chacha_cricket tumhare b yehe haal hona chahe

Haq baat per koray.

[Momo]

Originally Posted by chacha_cricket tumhare b yehe haal hona chahe

Sharam karo.

[GLORY OF '92]

Any evidence the video is genuine? Seems like Taliban propaganda material to me.

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by GLORY OF '92 Any evidence the video is genuine? Seems like Taliban propaganda material to me.

Umar Cheema is a taliban agent too. just because he wrote few articles criticizing the holy army but the idiots at GHQ are fine sleeping with their Whiskey' bottles and secret accounts in swiss accounts.

[suhaib]

Originally Posted by insaftak Umar Cheema is a taliban agent too. just because he wrote few articles criticizing the holy army but the idiots at GHQ are fine sleeping with their Whiskey' bottles and secret accounts in swiss accounts.

lol @ insaftak and his blind hatred, the only person with whiskey bottles and swiss accounts is your playboy khan

as for umar cheema, you allready know how pro taliban hamid mir and how strong his connections are with the TTP which himself has exposed now with being behind the killing of khalid khawaj, so why cant his college umar cheema, why do you think they come out with their deluided storeys against the military.

this was obviously a conspiracy against the military, and his paymasters took advantage of his beef with the military. Anyone could have torchered him but at the end of the day it would be the ISI that gets the blame and the blind brigade follows it.

[suhaib]

An Abduction Blamed On Pakistani Spooks

Posted by Ahmed Quraishi on Sep 17th, 2010


At one point last year, Jang Group came under attack from both the Pakistani and US governments simultaneously. The list of anti-media parties is longer than commonly thought.


By AHMED QURAISHI
Wednesday, 15 September 2010.


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—The abduction and torture a couple of weeks ago of an investigative reporter for one of Pakistan’s largest English-language dailies is turning into a classical Pakistani whodunit; a mystery that competing powerbrokers in Pakistan are exploiting to pull down one another.

There are three key players in the mystery: First is the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and the civilian spy agencies that work for him; second are the military-led spy agencies; and third is the Jang Group, the parent company of The News where the abducted journalist Umar Cheema works.

Mr. Cheema was kidnapped from a public area on 3 Sept., 2010. His abductors kept him in custody for less than a day, tortured him, shaved off his head, eyebrows and moustaches, and reportedly photographed and/or video-taped him naked, for future blackmail purposes. During the ordeal, the abductors accused Mr. Cheema of working to sabotage democracy. He was released and asked to convey a message to his immediate boss, Mr. Ansar Abbasi, the head of the investigative unit at The News and a widely admired journalist. The message was simple: Back off or we’ll hurt your son.

The incident marks a new low for Pakistani politics, where intimidation and violence are an accepted part of how politics are conducted. The history of how Pakistani politicians have been treating one another is quite colorful in this regard.

There are some voices now, mostly in the media but sourced to politicians who don’t want to be named, that are pointing fingers for this disturbing incident at the country’s military-controlled spy agencies, namely the ISI and the Military Intelligence.

Considering how the Pakistani political system is teetering on the brink of collapse, with the massive failures of Pakistani democracy exposed like never before, this abduction assumes unusual significance and might become a point of reference in the future.

It is important, therefore, to understand what is at play in this case.

The elected government of President Asif Zardari did achieve one thing in its first two-and-half years: it steered clear of political victimization and hounding journalists. [Despite this record, I personally was the target of a direct attempt at intimidation by a senior aide to President Zardari in the early days of his administration in 2008. But apart from that one case, the Zardari government to its credit shunned such tactics].

But this clean record of the Zardari government has almost been rolled back. For the past several months, Mr. Zardari’s administration has been withholding advertizing money from major news organizations as an arm-twisting tactic. The Jang Group, which runs The News International newspaper, the Urdu-language Jang, and Geo News television network, was a special target because of its influence and outreach. Pakistani federal and provincial governments are the biggest advertisers and newspapers depend on this source of revenue.

After drying up the ad money, the government resorted to unusual and unprecedented attacks against key journalists who all happened to work for the Jang Group. The cat was out of the bag when no less than President Zardari himself attacked these journalists and taunted them as ‘political actors’. [These journalists are Mr. Ansar Abbasi, Dr. Shahid Masoud, Mr. Shaheen Sehbai, Mr. Hamid Mir and Mr. Kamran Khan. An online demonization campaign spearheaded by PPPP’s media managers vilified these journalists and added two more names to the list: Mr. Ahmed Quraishi and Dr. Shireen Mazari.]

Interestingly, during this time the Zardari administration appeared to be faltering, and some newspapers reported unusual movements on the part of US ambassador Anne W. Patterson to quietly shore up support for Mr. Zardari among opposition politicians. Ms. Patterson also tried to put pressure on the Jang Group to muzzle the same cast of journalists that the Zardari administration was unhappy with. The US ambassador’s approach was different. She accused the journalists without evidence of ‘endangering American lives’ because they discussed in their work US political and military meddling inside Pakistan. At one point last year, Mr. Richard Holbrooke jumped in to chastise Geo News. US officials smartly dismissed every criticism against their covert activities inside Pakistan as ‘conspiracy theories’ and have been fairly angry with the Pakistani media ever since. The overlap between the Pakistani and US governments in criticizing the Pakistani media, and especially one of its most influential outlets, the Jang Group, was an important indication of the extent of US support for the Zardari government despite recognizing its weaknesses. [On Wednesday, Sept. 15, Mr. Holbrooke tried to mend his earlier anti-Geo remarks by taking time out from his tour of flooded areas in Sindh to visit the Jang Group offices in Karachi. His effort, coming at a time when the media group is under attack, was most probably an attempt to sway Pakistan’s most influential media conglomerate, part of the overall US public diplomacy effort in Pakistan. US ambassador did the same thing during Musharraf government’s clampdown on Jang.]

A disgruntled party supporter threw a shoe at President Zardari during a public event in Britain last month and the incumbent Pakistani government quickly exploited the incident to get back at its media critics. Amazingly, the Jang Group was singled out not just for criticism but for outright terror and intimidation. Mr. Zardari’s party goons [and every Pakistani political party maintains goons for similar purposes] surrounded the company’s Karachi offices, defiled its walls with graffiti, and piled up shoes at the gate. The attack was ironic because British newspapers were nastier to Mr. Zardari in their shoe-throwing story coverage and yet no party goon from the PPPP dared do to British newspapers what they did to Jang in Pakistan.

Fast forward to Sept. 3 and the kidnap and torture of Umar Cheema.

This time, a whisper campaign is trying to pin the blame on the country’s military-led spy agencies. The supporting evidence is that the abductors were dressed as police and made it clear they were defending the government, by implication revealing the identity of their alleged sponsors. If they were sent by the government, why would they want to make this obvious? So, the conclusion goes, the abductors belong to a ‘third party’ that was trying to create a clash between the media and the ‘democratic’ government, and who else would do this except the bad old Pakistani military.

Interestingly, some politicians close to the government spent considerable time after the Cheema incident quietly trying to convince journalists that the Pakistani military is involved.

Despite the strong innuendos, the military’s media spokespeople chose to ignore the whisper campaign.

Military-led spy agencies do have a record of ‘sorting out’ journalists critical of incumbent governments, mostly before or during the 1990s. This is part of how spy agencies have been abused by successive governments by involving them in everyday politics. After all, sitting governments do influence the workings of intelligence agencies. They all report to the Prime Minister, Defense Minister and the Interior Minister in various capacities. Agents look to government officials for favorable push come promotion time.

But in Mr. Cheema’s case, the circumstantial evidence hardly supports the case of the government-linked politicians behind the ‘it-is-the-military’ whisper campaign:

1. For starters, the military is no longer meddling in Pakistani politics. If anything, key aides of President Zardari never tire of repeating how Gen. Kayani is a pillar of stability for the incumbent government.

2. Mr. Cheema’s coverage of military-related stories was forceful but hardly unique. His coverage of the scandals of the elected government is more potent. The most serious in the list of military-related investigative stories that carry his byline are the reports on the ‘missing’ persons who were kidnapped during Mr. Musharraf’s government by limited joint ISI-CIA cells. This story has been widely reported by various Pakistani media organizations and none of them has reported any pressure from the military to stop the coverage. The other interesting story that Mr. Cheema wrote, about military’s noncooperation in terror investigations, is informative news but hardly an issue that keeps military officials awake at night.

3. Just as in Mr. Cheema’s case, military-led spy agencies were accused last year of kidnapping and killing three political activists in Balochistan and again this year with the murder of another prominent political activist. In both cases, it turned out later they were eliminated by political opponents. Event the so-called ‘target killings’ in Karachi, carried out by terrorists belonging to secret armed wings of mainly two self-appointed ‘linguistic’ political parties, were blamed on the Pakistani military.

4. The bold and daring government moves to intimidate the media in the last few months, ending with the recent undeclared ban on two major television news networks Geo and ARY, leave little doubt as to the identity of those who kidnapped Mr. Cheema and made a cowardly threat against the child of Mr. Abbasi.

5. Interestingly, Mr. Cheema’s most stunning piece of work – and the most dangerous in Pakistan’s context – is the story he did on how President Zardari and his close aides hired female ‘escorts’ during a visit to Istanbul and failed to pay them $8,000 in dues, forcing the girls to go to court and embarrassing the entire Pakistani government.

If the military-led agents roughed up Mr. Cheema, this is the government’s chance to get back at the powerful military. But it won’t.

The real story here is how Mr. Zardari’s government record has been stained by these anti-media measures, which, in the history of Pakistani governments, usually mean the government is insecure. It also marks the beginning of the end for the sitting government.

© 2007-2010. All rights reserved. PakNationalists.com
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium
without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by suhaib An Abduction Blamed On Pakistani Spooks Posted by Ahmed Quraishi on Sep 17th, 2010

Good old Ahmed Quraishi, the apologist of idiots at GHQ.

just click on the link that i posted in post #3 and watch how the identity of the poor reporter is erased. only the idiots at GHQ can do that. they will continue to do this because they are incapable of doing their jobs which is to protect the borders of pakistan, pakistani citizen and their property from foreign aggressors. Just look at the drone attacks that have killed pakistani citizens and destroyed their property.

Umar Cheema continue to expose these incompetent fools at GHQ.

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by suhaib lol @ insaftak and his blind hatred, the only person with whiskey bottles and swiss accounts is your playboy khan

Make up your mind bro, IS he a Yahoodi agent or Taliban Khan.

I find it hilarious how Imran Khan comes into every thread.

[suhaib]

Originally Posted by insaftak Make up your mind bro, IS he a Yahoodi agent or Taliban Khan. I find it hilarious how Imran Khan comes into every thread.

imran has to be brought into it because of your double standards of accussing others of the same things your hero does.

[PerfectionPersonified]

Originally Posted by GLORY OF '92 Any evidence the video is genuine? Seems like Taliban propaganda material to me.

i cant provide you with evidence but this is true"

[Xohaib]

No one is angel here.
Army is the best in Pakistan but not That good how we all think.
And stop bringing imran into it,he is the best in Pakistan

[insaftak]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An investigative reporter for a major Pakistani newspaper was on his way home from dinner here on a recent night when men in black commando garb stopped his car, blindfolded him and drove him to a house on the outskirts of town. Umar Cheema, 34, a reporter for The News, was kidnapped and beaten on the outskirts of Islamabad on Sept. 4 after having written several articles that were critical of the Pakistani Army. There, he says, he was beaten and stripped naked. His head and eyebrows were shaved, and he was videotaped in humiliating positions by assailants who he and other journalists believe were affiliated with the country’s powerful spy agency. At one point, while he lay face down on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him, his captors made clear why he had been singled out for punishment: for writing against the government. “If you can’t avoid rape,” one taunted him, “enjoy it.” The reporter, Umar Cheema, 34, had written several articles for The News that were critical of the Pakistani Army in the months preceding the attack. His ordeal was not uncommon for a journalist or politician who crossed the interests of the military and intelligence agencies, the centers of power even in the current era of civilian government, reporters and politicians said. What makes his case different is that Mr. Cheema has spoken out about it, describing in graphic detail what happened in the early hours of Sept. 4, something rare in a country where victims who suspect that their brutal treatment was at the hands of government agents often choose, out of fear, to keep quiet. “I have suspicions and every journalist has suspicions that all fingers point to the ISI,” Mr. Cheema said, using the acronym for the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the institution that the C.I.A. works with closely in Pakistan to hunt militants. The ISI is an integral part of the Pakistani Army; its head, Gen. Shuja Ahmed Pasha, reports to the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Officials at the American Embassy said they interviewed Mr. Cheema this week, and sent a report of his account to the State Department. In response to an e-mail for comment, a spokesman for the ISI said, “They are nothing but allegations with no substance or truth.” Mr. Cheema had won a Daniel Pearl Journalism Fellowship to train foreign journalists in 2008 and worked in The New York Times newsroom for six months at that time. He has worked at The News since 2007. In interviews, he said his car was stopped near his home in the capital by men with the words “no fear” inscribed on their clothes. Once he was blindfolded and driven to the safe house, he was handed over to another group of men who carried out the abuse, he said. After six hours, he was dumped on a road 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad. Mr. Cheema says he wrote more than 50 articles this year that questioned various aspects of the conduct of the military and the government, including corruption accusations against the president, Asif Ali Zardari. But it was three articles in particular, in June, July and August, on delicate internal army problems that appear to have angered the military. One article reported on the sensitive issue of the courts-martial of two army commandos who refused to obey orders and join the assault on a radical mosque and school in Islamabad in 2007. The attack was believed at the time to be unpopular in the army ranks because many soldiers were reluctant to fire on fellow Muslims. Moreover, courts-martial are rarely mentioned in the Pakistani news media, and reporters have been warned not to write about them. In his article, Mr. Cheema reported that two members of the Special Services Group, an elite commando squad, were being denied fair justice during the court-martial proceedings. In another article, Mr. Cheema wrote that the suspects in a major terrorist attack against a bus carrying ISI employees were acquitted because of the “mishandling” of the court case by the intelligence agency. In an article in early August, the reporter described how Army House, the residence of the chief of army staff, was protected by 400 city police officers and not by soldiers, as required by law. In its political coverage, The News is vociferously against the civilian government of Mr. Zardari, but the opinion pages publish a cross section of views, including pro-military columnists. While Mr. Cheema has chosen to publicize his case, he is not the only journalist or politician to come under the apparent harassment of the security services. The law minister in Punjab Province, Rana Sanullah Khan, said that in 2003, when he was an opposition politician and had criticized the army during the presidency of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, he was kidnapped and brutalized in a similar manner. In January, in Islamabad, the home of Azaz Syed, a reporter for Dawn, the main English-language daily, was attacked by unknown assailants days after he was threatened by supposed ISI agents over an investigative article he was researching related to the military. Kamran Shafi, a leading columnist and himself a former army officer who writes critically of the military, was harassed and his house was attacked last December by “elements linked to the security establishment,” according to his own account. In the last several years, journalists in the tribal areas, where the army is fighting the Taliban, have faced special risks and found it increasingly difficult to work for fear of offending either side. In September two journalists were killed in or near the tribal areas, under circumstances that remain unclear. Pakistan has developed a rambunctious news media spearheaded by round the clock television news channels in the last decade. The military and the ISI are treated with respect by the powerful television anchors, and by newspaper reporters who extol the deeds of the army in battling the Taliban. The ISI is rarely mentioned by name but referred to as “intelligence agencies.” One reason for the deference, according to a Pakistani intelligence official who has worked with the media cell of the ISI, is that the agency keeps many journalists on its payroll. Unspoken rules about covering the military and its intelligence branches are eagerly enforced, Babar Sattar, a Harvard-trained lawyer, said. A journalist who trespasses over the line is told to behave, Mr. Sattar said. Earlier this year, Mr. Cheema said he was called to a coffee shop in Islamabad by an ISI officer and warned to fall into line. At a journalists’ seminar in Lahore, the editor of a weekly newspaper, Najam Sethi, said it was up to the ISI to declare who had attacked Mr. Cheema. “If the ISI hasn’t done it, they should tell us who did it because they’re supposed to know,” Mr. Sethi said. “If they don’t tell, the presumption remains they did it.” But in a column titled “Surprise Surprise” in Dawn, Mr. Shafi said, “We will never find out what happened to poor Umar Cheema because the Deep State does not want us to find out.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/wo...1&ref=pakistan

Extra Judicial Murders, torture of Journalists.

This isn't even a Military Dictatorship yet.

[suhaib]

interesting thing is that all those journlists and media outlets that get training by these americans suddenly turn anti-army,

geo was trained by VOA(owned by intelligence agency CIA) in 2006 suddenly same time they viciously turned against the army, shahid masood also got his training from an american channel in 2007 and same time turned against the army, and now this umar cheema had landed from NYT depot in that to in 2007 and that to at The News, when VOA got involved in geo at the end of 2006 they also put in alot of new jounlists, umar cheema was probably another stooge to defame the pak army.

funny thing is how the american embassy has gotten involved in this
americans, their media and their puppets in pakistan having a field day

yet the blind brigade still deep asleep. HOPELESS.

[insaftak]

Originally Posted by suhaib interesting thing is that all those journlists and media outlets that get training by these americans suddenly turn anti-army, geo was trained by VOA(owned by intelligence agency CIA) in 2006 suddenly same time they viciously turned against the army, shahid masood also got his training from an american channel in 2007 and same time turned against the army, and now this umar cheema had landed from NYT depot in that to in 2007 and that to at The News, when VOA got involved in geo at the end of 2006 they also put in alot of new jounlists, umar cheema was probably another stooge to defame the pak army. funny thing is how the american embassy has gotten involved in this americans, their media and their puppets in pakistan having a field day yet the blind brigade. HOPELESS.

Kamran Shafi a former soldier is also on payroll of Americans.

I find it hilarious that supporters of biggest american puppet are blaming americans for our ISI torturing journalists.

[suhaib]

Originally Posted by insaftak Kamran Shafi a former soldier is also on payroll of Americans. I find it hilarious that supporters of biggest american puppet are blaming americans for our ISI torturing journalists.

sach karwa lagta hai.