More than a week has passed since a humans right activist was allegedly abducted by unidentified men in Swabi.
Idris Khattak is an activist associated with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch, and has also been affiliated with the National Party. At the time of his abduction, his driver was also detained. The driver has since been released by the abductors.
Khattak has worked on the documentation of human rights abuses in Khyber Pakhtunkhwaa and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, now known as "ex-FATA".
Amnesty International believes that Khattak was abducted on November 13. It has been almost 10 days of Khattak's disappearance. Local police have yet to register a case against the presumed abduction.
In a press release by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), it was said that Khattak's family believed he had been "forcibly disappeared" by security forces. If Khattak had been kidnapped by militant or criminal elements, they would have asked for a ransom by now, his family says.
If Khattak has been arrested by security forces as an "enforced disappearance", he joins 2,122 other unresolved cases of enforced disappearances that are still pending against the Pakistani state. The figure has been released by the government's own Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.
