U of T student jailed in Pakistan over social media content days after going missing
CBC
The family of a Canadian University of Toronto PhD student is concerned after he was arrested in Pakistan while conducting research for his dissertation.
Hamza Ahmed Khan, a dual Canadian-Pakistani citizen, travelled to Pakistan in December to interview experts on the politics of democracy promotion in Muslim-majority societies in Lahore, where he was staying with a friend, and Islamabad.
He was expected to arrive in Karachi Thursday morning to spend Ramadan with his family but never showed.
The family learned Sunday from a Pakistani journalist that Ahmed Khan was taken into custody by the country’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA). Now, he’s in prison.
“It's the worst conditions that you can imagine,” Ahmed Khan’s brother, Awes Ahmed Khan, told CBC Toronto Tuesday. “It's multiple people in a single cell. ... It's [not] fit for a decent human person.”
The NCCIA’s official report notes Ahmed Khan has been in their custody since Saturday because, during a routine cyber patrol, it found that his X and Instagram accounts were “disseminating misinformation and disinformation targeting state institutions.”
“The nature of these posts is inflammatory and appears designed to incite public unrest, spread animosity, and undermine social order,” the report said. “The propagation of such malicious content poses a significant risk, with the potential to cause severe reputational damage to the state of Pakistan both domestically and internationally.”
Awes disputes that characterization, saying his brother is balanced and simply uses social media as a means to engage in intellectual discussion.
“He's a person who's very articulate. He talks with rhetoric,” he said. “He debates with people sometimes on critical issues and a lot of times those issues are related to his background.”
Ahmed Khan is being held in the Lahore district jail under the country’s 2016 Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. Awes says his brother appeared before a magistrate on Sunday, which ordered he be held for at least 14 days.
While the NCCIA’s report says Ahmed Khan has been in official custody since Saturday, his friend in Lahore told Awes he initially went missing Thursday morning during a trip with ride-hailing service Yango.
The family reached out to Yango, which told them Ahmed Khan’s trip was cancelled halfway through. CBC Toronto has reached out to the NCCIA, Yango and the Consulate General of Pakistan in Toronto for comment.
The family’s lawyer, Asad Jamal, said Ahmed Khan was “abducted” on Thursday, not arrested, because it wasn’t done in the “right, legal way.”
“He was not informed about the circumstances and the reasons for being taken into custody by whosoever did that,” he said. “We don't know who took him away. We suspect that intelligence agencies might have been involved.”
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