Pakistan’s ISI distances itself from attack on journalist Asad Toor
Ministry says the spy agency is being ‘targeted’
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency has distanced itself from the May 26 attack on journalist Asad Toor, the Pakistani information ministry said Saturday.
The statement came after a high-level contact between the Ministry of Information and the spy agency.
“The continuity of these allegations shows an organised conspiracy,” it read. “The ISI has been the target of a fifth-generation war.”
The agency believes that investigation into the attack must go ahead and strict action be taken against the perpetrators, according to the statement. The ISI will fully cooperate with investigation agencies.
It said the tradition of blaming the institutions without evidence should come to an end. “Such negative traditions are part of a conspiracy against the institutions.”
Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed said a few people want to involve the ISI in the attack on Toor. “[We] have found an important footage, through which [we] will reach the culprits,” he said.
Rasheed said the Islamabad inspector-general and the Federal Investigation Agency would bring the perpetrators to justice.
Related: Criticising ISI has become fashion for Western media, says Pakistan minister
Unidentified men brutally attacked journalist Asad Ali Toor at his Islamabad home earlier this week.
Footage of a CCTV camera outside his apartment showed three men exiting the house. Later, the journalist was seen coming out of the flat with his hands and feet tied with clothes.
Toor is known for his court reporting and criticism of the establishment. He runs his own YouTube channel.
This was the third such incident in Islamabad in the recent past.
Absar Alam, a veteran journalist and the former Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority chairman, was shot and injured in the city last month.
In July 2020, another journalist Matiullah Jan was abducted from outside his wife’s school in Islamabad’s G-6 sector.
His abduction was caught on a CCTV camera too. Jan was taken away by several men in black uniforms and plainclothes.
He was, however, released by his abductors after 12 hours.