Pakistani media mogul’s bizarre arrest shows how media freedom is being squeezed
The country’s most prominent media mogul Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman is detained and incarcerated. The image-conscious Prime Minister Imran Khan ignores a letter from United Nations officials about the detention. The media tycoon is held for over 100 days without charge; five bail hearings are postponed, and the bench assigned to hear his case is changed three times in as many months.Even for a nascent democracy such as Pakistan, under military rule for much of its existence, the bizarre arrest and ongoing detention of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman is novel and tragic.The owner-editor of Jang, Pakistan’s most powerful media conglomerate, was arrested on March 12. The move was so unexpected that he didn’t obtain pre-arrest bail when responding to a summons by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) office