Questioned military’s role, Pak journo ‘threatened`

Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi says he has been receiving threatening messages after raising questions about the military`s role in politics.

Pakistani journalist Najam
Sethi says he has
been receiving threatening messages after raising questions
about the military`s role in politics.
He said if the threats did not stop, he would be
"compelled" to name the "organisations and officials" who were
responsible for them.

Without naming any intelligence agency, Sethi said during
his show on Geo News channel last night that the
organisation`s operatives were "in touch with and threatening
several other senior journalists".

The journalists did not speak about the threats before
"because we did not want to destabilise things", he said "But
the time has come when all of them should come forward and
speak about it publicly," he said.

"This is not the age when intelligence operatives should
be threatening their own civilians. A state within the state
is not acceptable."

Sethi`s revelations came a week after journalist Hamid
Mir claimed he had received threatening messages from the
"security establishment".

Sethi, who is editor-in-chief of the weekly The Friday
Times, has faced problems with the security establishment in
the past too.

He recently spent several months in the US following
reports that he and his family had been receiving threats.

Media advocacy groups say 29 journalists have been
killed in Pakistan in the past five years, and many of them
were targeted for their work.

In May this year, journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad was
abducted and killed in Islamabad, two days after he alleged in
an article that Al Qaeda had infiltrated the Pakistan Navy.

Many rights groups and journalists` organisations
accused the Inter-Services Intelligence of involvement in the
incident, a charge that was denied by the spy agency.

PTI

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