KP police issue arrest warrants against PTM's Pashteen, Wazir, six others

Arrest warrants for the chief of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) Manzoor Pashteen, MNA Ali Wazir, and six others have been issued by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government, it emerged on Friday.

According to a notification issued by the Swabi Superintendent of Police and sent to political agents in Waziristan on Friday, Pashteen, Wazir, Dr Said Alam Masood, Fazal Advocate, Khan Zaman, Mohsin Dawood, Samad Khan and Noorul Salam have been named as "proclaimed offenders" and are "required to be arrested" in connection with a case registered against them on August 28.

The "case" pertains to a jalsa (gathering) which was held by the movement that day — in defiance of orders barring them from doing so — against human rights violations and for the recovery of missing persons.

PTM — a movement for the rights of those affected by the war against militancy in the tribal areas, especially South Waziristan — has been protesting in different parts of the country against enforced disappearances, extrajudicial arrests and killings, as well as the mistreatment of the Pakhtun community.

PTM first made headlines in Islamabad following the extrajudicial killing of Waziristan native Naqeebullah Mehsud — a shopkeeper and aspiring model — by police in Karachi in January.

The movement's leaders claim that in the past decade, 32,000 Pashtuns have gone missing from Fata. They insist that their struggle is to ensure implementation of the Constitution, under which law-enforcement agencies are supposed to provide details of the people they pick up and present them before courts within a stipulated time period.