An Islamabad district and session court on Tuesday granted the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) five-day remand of journalist Asad Ali Toor in a case about an online campaign against the judiciary.
In January, the caretaker government had formed a five-member joint investigation team (JIT) to “ascertain facts behind a malicious social media campaign” against the judiciary in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to deprive PTI of its iconic ‘bat’ symbol.
Last week, Toor was interrogated for nearly eight hours by FIA officials on the same matter. The interrogation had taken place despite the attorney general for Pakistan assuring the apex court last month that the FIA would not take action before the general election on the notices sent to journalists. The apex court had adjourned the hearing in the case till the first week of March.
Last night, Toor’s legal team confirmed that he had been arrested by the agency. Toor’s counsel Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir said the journalist had arrived at the FIA’s Cyber Crime Reporting Centre in Islamabad earlier in the day to “demonstrate his positive intent, answer a summons notice issued to him on Saturday and join the inquiry about the campaign against the judiciary”.
She said the team went to the FIA office after acquiring an order from the Islamabad High Court, which instructed the agency to not harass the journalist but he was still taken inside the FIA premises without his legal team.
She said an FIA official came out of the building, delivered the legal team a handwritten note from Toor and said that the journalist was “formally arrested”. The letter contained various instructions from the journalist for his family.
Today, Toor was presented before Judicial Magistrate Mohammad Shabbir. During the hearing, the FIA sought the journalist’s physical remand.
Subsequently, the court accepted the requested and remanded Toor in FIA’s custody for five days.
