Malaysian authorities confirmed Tuesday that Pakistani journalist Syed Fawad Ali Shah was deported to Pakistan following his disappearance in August and a decade after he fled the country.
Home Minister Saifudin Nasution Ismail confirmed the deportation and explained that it has been ten years since he left Pakistan after writing an article implicating senior Pakistani officials in corruption and missing persons cases.
The journalist’s family, who said he disappeared in Malaysia in August 2022, explained that he had refugee ‘status’ granted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which had not been recognized by the Malaysian government.
Saifudin said that the deportation was organized by the previous government, headed by the now former Prime Minister Ismail Yakob, following the request of the Pakistani High Commissioner.
Thus, he has pointed out that the previous government tracked him down and subsequently deported him to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. «I can confirm that there are official reports about this and that the action was taken following the request of the Pakistani government,» he said.
In this regard, he stressed that the journalist had also been identified as a former police officer and would have open cases against him in Pakistan. «There are two versions of this case. The media place him as a journalist, but the official Pakistani version is that he was a policeman and had several open cases against him,» he reiterated.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
