Pakistani police produced a prominent human rights activist in a local court on Saturday, a day after he was picked up outside his home by intelligence operatives, officials said.
Khalid Khawaja has been charged with possessing banned literature for propagating militancy and inciting hatred against the government, they said. Police sought a 14-day remand of the accused but the court allowed police to keep him in custody for three days for interrogation.
Khawaja is a former official of the country's military-run Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and now heads a human rights group called Defence of Human Rights. He has been leading a campaign for missing people allegedly detained by intelligence agencies in the fight against terrorism. "I was just outside my house when intelligence officials grabbed me, covered my face with a piece of cloth and pushed me into a vehicle," Khawaja told reporters at the court.
He said they drove him for an hour before dropping him at a police station. Khawaja's daughter Rabia said on Saturday police rang the family to inform them he was being held at a police station in the capital but gave no reason of his detention. "This is blatant violation of human rights, first they kidnapped him and now they say he was in the police custody," she told AFP.
Pakistan's Supreme Court recently took up the cases of some 41 missing people after petitions by relatives who believed they were being held in the custody of intelligence agencies for undisclosed reasons.
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