Targeted Individual Disappeared, Tortured, Beaten, Interrogated

Anti-drone campaigner Karim Khan, after kidnapped from his home and surviving over a week of being chained, tortured, beaten, and interrogated about his investigations of U.S. drone strikes, was released Friday. He thanks the UK charity Repreive and readers such as some at Before It’s News, who called for his freedom.

Karim Khan was disappeared over a week ago, as Deborah Dupré reported on Before It’s News where a call was made for public pressure to release him. Today, Khan credits Reprieve and subsequent international public pressure campaign on the Pakistani government for his freedom.

Reprieve investigates extra-judicial killing and detention around the world and reunites ‘disappeared’ prisoners with their legal rights.

Khan was kidnapped from his Pakistan home on February 5th in front of his wife and young children by 15 to 20 men wearing police uniforms and plain clothes. For the past week, his whereabouts were unknown.

“When I was picked up I thought I would never see my family again, that I would never be free again because of all the stories I have heard about disappeared people,” Khan said Friday after his release. “Now that I have been released and have seen the news, the efforts of activists, I know it is because of them that I am free, and I would like to thank them.”

After kidnapped, Khan said he was moved from one undisclosed location to another, with a blindfold over his eyes during transport.

“While detained, Mr. Khan was interrogated, beaten and tortured,” according to the UK-based charity Reprieve. “He was placed in chains and repeatedly questioned about his investigations into drone strikes, his knowledge of drone strike victims and his work advocating on their behalf.”

“They tortured me. They punched me on the head, they slap my arms and they beat me with a stick,” Khan told reporters Friday night, according to AFP.

Khan said he’s unable to identify his kidnappers.

“It is difficult to say if they were army, police or civilians,” he told reporters, as other targeted individuals have said about their covert assailants.

His release, however, followed a Pakistani judge ordering on Wedensday that the country’s intelligence forces, overseen by the Ministry of the Interior, produce Khan.

Khan’s supporters are asking whether the U.S. played a role in ordering Khan’s abduction, given this summer’s revelation that the Obama administration directly pressed the government of Yemen to continue jailing Yemeni Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who uncovered a U.S. drone strike that killed dozens of Yemeni civilians.

“In addition to investigating what happened to [Khan], we should be asking about the role of the U.S. government,” said Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, in an interview with Common Dreams. “The Yemeni journalist who was held was done so at the hands of U.S. government. Journalists should be asking about this.”

When Khan was kidnapped, he was already a victim of a U.S. drone strike. He lost his 35-year-old brother, Asif Iqbal, and his 18-year-old son, Zaneullah Khan, when a U.S. drone leveled his home in Machikhel, a village in North Waziristan, on December 31, 2009.

He’d told Medea Benjamin of Codepink that the U.S. is lying about who they are killing:

 I think that the American people are telling a lie to everyone and everywhere.  In these drone attacks they attack my house also.  It was 31st December 2009 and they said that we killed a number of AQ terrorists, but in fact in this drone attack there were only three persons.  One was my beloved son, named Zaheenullah, and the other was my younger brother named Asid Iqbal and the third one was a mason by profession, he was constructing a mosque for us in that village. 

Since then, Khan’s been a prominent campaigner and witness against drones. He previously took legal action against the CIA, demanding it halt U.S. drone killings. When abducted, he was amidst legal proceedings against the Pakistani government for its failure to investigate the murder of his son and brother.

Khan was scheduled to travel to Europe to meet with German, Dutch and British parliamentarians later this week to testify on his personal experience and journalistic reporting of U.S. drone strikes. He says that, despite his ordeal, he plans to make his trip.

“The lesson learned though this experience is that we must always raise our voices,” said Shahzad Akbar, Khan’s lawyer. “We need to take this stand for each and every person who disappears, it is the only way to force those in power to listen. That is why I am so thankful to all the local and international activists who spoke out for Kareem.”

Sources: Reprieve, Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin

Photo Credit: Upstate Drone Action