ISLAMABAD: Prominent human rights lawyer Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir had gotten bail, her lawyer said on Wednesday in a case that has put a sharp spotlight on what rights groups have called a growing crackdown on politicians and rights activists in Pakistan.
Islamabad police on Sunday arrested Mazari-Hazir, and Ali Wazir, co-founder of the Pashtun ethnic rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), two days after they addressed a rally organized by the group.
The police complaint on Wazir and Mazari-Hazir’s arrest said they and other leaders of the PTM had violated an agreement with the local administration and marched ahead from an area designated for Friday’s PTM rally at Tarnol Chowk on GT Road. However, rights groups widely said their arrests were connected to speeches at the rally in which they criticized the Pakistani military over enforced abductions, which the army denies being involved in. In videos widely circulated on social media, the human rights lawyer urged action against serving military officials involved in such acts, calling them “traitors.”
“Happy to announce that @ImaanZHazir has been granted bail by the Hon’able Magistrate,” the mazari family lawyer Ahsan J. Pirzada wrote on Twitter, adding that Wazir had not gotten bail but instead sent on judicial remand.
“Mr. Ali is also entitled to apply for post-arrest bail. No reason for his bail denial exist, hence, he might get it tomorrow.”
Mazari-Hazir’s mother Shireen Mazari is a former human rights lawyer and an ex-member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The PTI has faced intense state action since May when Khan was briefly arrested in a graft case, unleashing nationwide protests in which his supporters ransacked and damaged military and other properties. Khan was released on bail then but is currently in jail in another corruption case and has been disqualified from running for elections.
Wazir, who co-founded the PTM which campaigns against alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Pashtuns and other ethnic minorities, was brought to court on Monday with his face covered by a cloth. Wazir served as a legislator in Pakistan’s National Assembly from August 2018 to August 2023.
Mazari-Hazir and Wazir’s arrests come at a time when rights groups have raised concerns over what they call a growing number of arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances of activists in Pakistan.
The country’s most prominent human rights group, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, has said the latest arrests pointed “to a larger, more worrying pattern of state-sanctioned violence against people exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly.”
