Rights activist and lawyer Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, were arrested in Islamabad on Friday while they were reportedly en route to a court appearance, her family said.
Imaan’s mother, former federal minister Shireen Mazari, said in a series of posts on X that police personnel stopped the couple and took them into custody. She said they were placed in separate vehicles and taken to undisclosed locations.
She said no first information report (FIR) was shown by the police and that members of the bar association “sadly could do nothing.”
Calling the arrest “fascism at its peak,” she said those in power “must be so pleased with this achievement.”
The couple had been scheduled to appear before a trial court on Friday in a case related to alleged controversial tweets, after failing to appear the previous day despite repeated summons.
The court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Mohammad Afzal Majoka had issued arrest warrants for both on January 16.
Family sources said the couple had avoided arrest for the past two nights by taking refuge in the office of Islamabad High Court Bar Association President Wajid Ali Gilani.
‘Gross violation of rights’
Nadia Baloch, the sister of detained Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leader Dr Mahrang Baloch, condemned the arrests. She described them as a “gross violation of human rights” and “an attack on freedom of speech and the peaceful struggle.”
She said both Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali had supported “marginalized and oppressed people across Pakistan, especially the Baloch nation,” and urged rights organizations and activists to act for their release.
Dr Shalee Baloch, organizer of the Baloch Women Forum (BWF), said the couple had been “the voice of oppressed people” and described their detention as “heartbreaking.”
She said the arrests showed “how lawlessness prevails across the country even for lawyers,” adding that the detentions were “a direct attack on the integrity of those who speak against human rights abuses and for the rule of law.” She said those involved should be held accountable and that the incident reflected “a growing violation of the state’s own laws and international conventions.”
Sammi Deen Baloch said the arrests should trouble “anyone who still believes access to justice exists in Pakistan,” adding that Baloch families had seen relatives taken “before they could reach the court.”
She said Mazari and Chattha were being targeted for “standing with the disappeared” and that their arrests were “a warning to anyone who crosses the line between observing injustice and naming it.”
She said a justice system that blocks people from reaching court and then punishes them for not appearing “is not broken, it is working exactly as it was built to work.”
Norway-based journalist Kiyya Baloch said the arrest was “a brazen attack on the law, the judiciary and the legal fraternity.” He said such incidents had eroded public trust in the courts, which he described as “either completely capitulated before the powerful or incapable of providing protection to the weak.”
Academic and rights activist Nida Kirmani said “the brutality of the state truly knows no bounds” and called for public condemnation of the arrests. She described the pair as “two of the few people left in this country who have consistently demonstrated the courage to stand with the oppressed.”
In a separate statement, Baloch Voice for Justice said the arrests reflected “state tactics that rely on intimidation instead of law.” The group said silencing lawyers and activists was “a direct assault on due process and fundamental freedoms,” and accused authorities of misusing legal institutions to suppress dissent.
Human rights organization Amnesty International said the arrests marked “the latest escalation in a sustained campaign of judicial harassment and intimidation” by Pakistani authorities.
The group cited eyewitness reports that law enforcement personnel used undue force during the arrest and provided no reasons at the time, raising “serious concerns” about the couple’s safety. It said the lack of due process and the pursuit of “spurious and retaliatory cases” appeared aimed at silencing the pair for their human rights work.
Amnesty International called for the immediate release of Imaan Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha and urged authorities to drop all charges “targeting them solely for their work defending human rights.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it “strongly condemns” what it described as the unlawful arrest and reported manhandling of the couple by Islamabad police while they were en route from the Islamabad High Court to the sessions court.
HRCP said arresting lawyers in the presence of bar leadership and taking them to an undisclosed police station constituted “grave abuse of authority and contempt for due process.” It said the repeated use of “successive and fabricated FIRs” to “harass, intimidate and ultimately muzzle dissent” violated constitutional guarantees.
‘Weaponizing laws to silence dissent’ — BYC
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee, in a statement issued a day before the arrests, said the prosecution of Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act showed how the state was “weaponizing laws to silence human rights defenders.”
The group said targeting a lawyer for carrying out her professional responsibilities represented “a grave assault on human rights advocacy.” It said Mazari had stood with families of the forcibly disappeared and defended Baloch students against racial profiling.
The BYC said that if a high-profile lawyer could face such punitive action, “the scale of repression faced daily by ordinary Baloch civilians, students, workers, women and families of the disappeared is beyond imagination.” It described the case as “the deliberate criminalization of dissent.”