Pervez framing me: Journalist

- By Ashish Kumar Sen

Washington, Aug. 24: The Pakistan police has registered a case of “dacoity” against the editor of a Washington-based Internet newspaper.
Mr Shaheen Sehbai, till recently the editor of Pakistan daily The News and a former Washington correspondent for the Dawn, has been charged with stealing household items from his cousin’s home in Rawalpindi. The alleged incident took place at gunpoint 18 months ago.
In an interview with The Asian Age, Mr Sehbai called the charges ridiculous. “I have never used a gun in my life,” he says. R.A. Bazaar police in Rawalpindi registered the case on a complaint from a junior civilian General Headquarters employee who was once married to Mr Sehbai’s cousin. The couple divorced over a year ago.
“The case has everything to do with the Tribune,” says Mr Sehbai, referring to his recently-launched online newspaper South Asia Tribune. The website’s latest edition, featuring investigative reports, carries a story detailing cases of alleged land grab by Pakistan’s top Army officers including President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The report alleges Gen. Musharraf bought state land in Bahawalpur at the “laughable price” of Rs 380 an acre. “The fraud that was committed was in the justification of the purchase. These Army officers, from generals to colonels to an odd Navy and Air Force high up, got the land saying ‘they will prove to be a frontline against an invading enemy.’ Many of these frontline landlords sold their prized lands and were happy to keep the millions they got in return.” Mr Sehbai says the list of officers was put together after months of hard work, cajoling, appeasing and even bribing some of the petty land record keepers.
“Through this website I have been able to expose several scandals of the Musharraf government,” says Mr Sehbai who prides himself for being an “independent, anti-establishment reporter.” He adds, “Now they are trying to get even in a very stupid way. The fact that the case has been lodged 18 months after the alleged event itself speaks about its merit.”
While the dacoity case does not bother him, Mr Sehbai is upset that his cousin’s ex-husband — “a very junior civilian employee of the Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi” — was used in this “blatant and shameful attempt by the military authorities to harass, defame and victimise me and my family.”
He claims his relationship with the junior civilian employee was known only to a senior military officer, now posted in Inter Services public relations department, headed by Gen. Musharraf’s press spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi.
Mr Sehbai stayed in Pakistan over a year after the alleged incident and left in March after the Musharraf government put pressure on his newspaper for its reporting of Daniel Pearl’s murder trial. Pearl, the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, was kidnapped in Karachi and later murdered by his abductors.
The News had published stories based on the confessions of Sheikh Omar, the prime accused in Pearl’s murder. Mr Sehbai says these reports had upset the government and his paper was under a lot of pressure to refrain from printing the stories. “They blocked the entire financial revenue and advertisements to the whole newspaper group. The management was under severe pressure.”
Quitting his job in protest, Mr Sehbai arrived in the US in March. He now fears for the safety of his siblings — a sister and a brother — and other family members who are still in Pakistan. He has instructed his legal counsel, Mr Babar Awan in Rawalpindi, to prepare a suitable legal defence to fight this harassment which “exposes all claims of Gen. Pervez Musharraf about freedom of the press in Pakistan.”
Mr Sehbai hasn’t returned to Pakistan since March; and he doesn’t plan to go back in a rush. It’s not the case that bothers him — “the legal clauses they have used are so flimsy, I can get bail.” What he’s concerned about are the men behind the case. “They are vicious. They can do a lot of harm.”