Dissident Pakistani exiles in UK may be 'targeted': Reports

The episode is raising fresh concern over the Pakistan authoritarian regimes targeting dissidents in the UK.

British security sources are understood to be concerned that Pakistan, a strong UK ally – particularly on intelligence issues – might be prepared to target individuals on British soil, reports The Guardian.

The Pakistan Observer has been told of further warnings given by other intelligence services across Europe to Pakistani dissidents, including rights activists from the Pakistani province of Balochistan, journalists, and members of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, a group representing ethnic Pashtuns.

Mark Lyall Grant, former UK high commissioner to Pakistan and once the UK’s top diplomat to the UN, told The Guardian that if figures from the Pakistani military had threatened exiles in the UK then this would be taken very seriously by the British government.

“If there is illegal pressure, in particular on journalists in the UK, then I would expect the law enforcement agencies and the British government to take notice of that and to make an appropriate legal and/or diplomatic response," Grant said.

Lyall Grant, also the UK’s former national security adviser, added that any evidence that officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful spy agency of the country, were intimidating people in the UK would not be ignored.

“If British nationals or residents in the UK acting lawfully are being harassed or threatened by the ISI, or anyone else, then the British government would certainly take an interest,' he todl the newspaper.

He said the development reflected a broader trend in authoritarian states such as Rwanda, Tanzania and the Philippines among others, becoming sufficiently emboldened to start silencing critics.

Interestingly, civil rights group in Pakistan have claimed that press freedom has been curtailed in the nation ever since PM Imran Khan came to power with the support of the military.Gul Bukhari, a British-Pakistani YouTuber and columnist who has openly criticised the military, fled to the UK after being abducted by security forces in Lahore in 2018.

“I feel threatened in London,” she told The Guardian.

Last year, a leaked Pakistani government memo accused a number of Pakistani journalists based in Europe and the US of producing “anti-state content” for foreign media under pseudonyms, The Guardian reported.

Talking to the Observer on condition of anonymity, the journalist said he was also the subject of a warning notice from the intelligence branch of Pakistan’s army. He said authorities in his adopted country had confirmed a threat to his life.

“For the past six to eight months, I haven’t done any proper journalism because I have been threatened to a serious level that I had to step back,” the exiled journalist said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed concern about  surveillance of exiled Pakistani journalists.

“We are aware of a number of cases that have not been made public. It’s widely understood that these types of threats could only come from Pakistan’s military or intelligence services,”  CPJ’s Steven Butler told The Guardian.

Exiled in Paris, the prominent Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui, who escaped abduction in Islamabad in 2018, said his family has been facing repeated harassment in the country.