A Pakistani journalist known for criticising the powerful military said he was attacked by up to a dozen men en route to the airport in Rawalpindi but managed to escape before being kidnapped, suffering minor injuries during the scuffle.
A Pakistani journalist known for criticising the powerful military said he was attacked by up to a dozen men en route to the airport in Rawalpindi but managed to escape before being kidnapped, suffering minor injuries during the scuffle.
"I was on my way to airport today at 8:20 am when 10-12 armed men stopped my cab & forcibly tried to abduct me. I managed to escape. Safe and with police now," Siddiqui tweeted from a friend's Twitter account early in the morning.
Speaking to WION in Delhi, Taha said 10 to 12 men yanked open the left-hand side doors of the car and tried to pull him out. Taha tried desperately to get out from the other side.
"Saale ko goli maaro,' the men, who Taha said were armed with Kalashnikovs and pistols, shouted.
Taha managed to get out from the other side of the car.
He ran across the incoming traffic, got to another cab, and managed to make his getaway.
Taha then made his way to the police.
Siddiqui spoke to Reuters from a police station where he was filing a report on the incident, and described how his taxi was stopped on the highway when another vehicle swerved, and braked suddenly in front of it.
About a dozen men armed with rifles and revolvers pulled him out of the cab, beat him and "threatened to kill" him.
"They threw me in the back of the vehicle in which I had been travelling, but the door on the other side was open," Siddiqui said. "I jumped out and ran and was able to get into a taxi that was nearby, whose driver then floored it."
In a police statement, seen by Reuters, Siddiqui said during the kidnap attempt he appealed for help from a military vehicle that was passing by.
"I saw a military vehicle and shouted for help but one of the abductors gestured (the vehicle) to move on and they did," Siddiqui said in the police statement, adding he had previously been "intimidated" by civilian and military security officials.
Siddiqui pleaded with police to help him recover his personal belongings - laptop computer, phone, hard drives, passport and suitcase - and provide him and his family with "police protection".
"My life is under threat," he said in the statement.
Siddiqui, the Pakistani bureau chief of Indian television channel WION and who has reported for France 24, had previously complained of being harassed by authorities for publishing bold critiques of the country's security establishment.
"This is extremely worrying and reinforces the fear that human rights groups and media organisations have voiced for a while now that the Pakistan government views violence as an instrument of dealing with dissenting voices," Human Rights Watch country representative Saroop Ijaz told AFP.
"This is also a reflection of the impunity that has existed for a long time, and has been increasing recently," he said.
The Rawalpindi Islamabad Union of Journalists said it had contacted Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal "to direct the concerned officials to investigate the incident of attempted kidnapping of a senior journalist".
The attack comes months after prominent reporter Ahmed Noorani was also savagely beaten and stabbed in the head after being dragged out of his car in Islamabad by armed assailants.
Pakistan has a long history of enforced disappearances, particularly in conflict zones near the border with Afghanistan, or in restive southwestern Balochistan province.
The country routinely ranks among the world's most dangerous countries for media workers, and reporting critical of the powerful military is considered a red flag, with reporters at times detained, beaten and even killed for running afoul of the security establishment.
With inputs from Reuters and PTI
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