An award-winning journalist known for his critical reporting of Pakistan’s powerful military has said he narrowly avoided abduction after his taxi was stopped by armed men.

Taha Siddiqui, who has reported for the Guardian, France 24 and other outlets, said he was travelling on a highway in Rawalpindi on Wednesday when two vehicles blocked his car from the front and back.

Four armed men emerged from each car and three more appeared from another nearby, he said, cordoning off the area and then swarming his vehicle.



“I was being beaten and dragged away and I kept resisting. Then one guy in perfect English said: ‘Stop resisting,’ and then he said: ‘Shoot him in the leg,’” Siddiqui told the Guardian from a hospital in Islamabad.

The men forced him back in his car, he said, from where he fled through an unlocked door on the other side before attempting to wave down a passing military vehicle.

“I yelled and screamed at them to help me because I was being kidnapped, but a heavy-looking guy who was well dressed told the military vehicle to move forth,” he said. “They seemed to know each other.”

Running through oncoming traffic, Siddiqui said, he jumped into a taxi, which drove him only a few hundred metres before the driver balked at involving himself in an operation by the security forces.

He said he ran on foot through an empty lot and ditches to reach a marble factory, where a labourer agreed to drive him to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.



Siddiqui, 33, sustained minor wounds and scratches. He has registered a case with the police.

The journalist has previously come under pressure for his work, receiving a summons last year from the country’s Federal Investigation Agency for posting tweets deemed to be critical of the military.

Pakistan’s military exercises enormous power over foreign policy and internal security and has directly run the government for periods totalling more than three decades.

Authorities have been cracking down on social media and five liberal bloggers were abducted in January last year, resurfacing weeks later claiming they had been tortured by state security agencies. The government has denied any involvement.

Raza Khan, an activist who promotes peace between India and Pakistan, is believed to have been abducted last month in Lahore and is still missing.

Pakistan is ranked 139th out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index maintained by Reporters Without Borders.



Siddiqui said he still felt in shock. “It’s an out of body experience,” he said. “The way I escaped, I don’t know if I would have disappeared for ever. The only one thing I can do right now is to keep talking about this.”

Amnesty International has condemned the alleged kidnap attempt. “Pakistani journalists like Taha Siddiqui have a right to carry out their work freely and without fear,” said Omar Waraich, the organisation’s deputy south Asia director. “These crimes must be immediately and effectively investigated.”

The Pakistan Armed Forces have been contacted for comment.