Press Releases

Raskin, McGovern Condemn Pakistan’s Imprisonment of Human Rights Defender, Demand Answers

November 24, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representatives Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and James P. McGovern (MA-02) condemned the Government of Pakistan’s brutal detention of Pashtun human rights advocate Idris Khattak and demanded his immediate release in a letter to the country’s ambassador to the United States, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh. Khattakwas kidnapped and disappeared more than six years ago and has been in government detention ever since.

“During [Khattak’s] career advocating for the Pashtun people he documented human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” Raskin and McGovern wrote. “While traveling home, he was stopped by security agents, abducted, and disappeared.”

For seven months, Khattak’s loved ones knew nothing of his whereabouts or whether he was still alive. In 2021, he was convicted by a secret, military tribunal, even though he is a civilian, and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Since then, he has had limited access to his family and essential medical care. 

Pakistani civil society and international bodies have condemned Khattak’s mistreatment. These groups include Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and the special procedures of United Nations Human Rights Council.

“It has been six years since prominent Pakistani human rights defender Idris Khattak was first detained, subject to enforced disappearance, and then tried in a secret military court,” said Andrew Fandino, Advocacy Director for the Individuals at Risk Program at Amnesty International USA. “He is serving a 14-year prison sentence simply because of his human rights work. Idris should immediately be released and allowed to rejoin his family. This injustice must end now.”

“Idris Khattak spent decades of his life defending the rights of Pakistan’s most vulnerable populations,” said Brian Tronic, Director of the Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners at Freedom House. “The government of Pakistan should be celebrating him as a hero, not locking him up on baseless national security charges. His abduction, disappearance, and continued detention on baseless charges represents the danger that many human rights defenders in Pakistan, and minority rights defenders in particular, face on a daily basis. The Government of Pakistan should release him immediately.”

The lawmakers are demanding that Pakistani officials unconditionally release Khattak. They urge the Government of Pakistan to conduct an independent and thorough investigation into his abduction, military trial and continued detention him.

Read the full letter here and below.

  

Dear Ambassador Sheikh: 
  
We are writing to request the immediate release of Idris Khattak, a prominent Pakistani human rights advocate, who has been in government detention for nearly six years. Despite being a civilian, Khattak was subject to a “grossly unfair military trial” in 2021 which resulted in a 14-year prison sentence. According to the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, Khattak has had “extremely limited contact with the outside world” over the last six years. We urge you to release Khattak from prison, and provide us with information regarding his ongoing detention.
  
Khattak is a well-known human rights activist who previously consulted with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. During his career advocating for the Pashtun people and speaking out against government repression, he documented human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas. For the last six years, he has been subjected to the very types of government abuse that he previously documented and highlighted for the world to see. His detention began on November 13, 2019, when he was stopped by plain-clothed security agents, abducted, and disappeared while traveling between Islamabad and Peshawar. For seven months Khattak’s whereabouts were a mystery – his family, friends, and colleagues did not know whether he was dead or alive.
  
In June 2020, Pakistani officials finally confirmed that Khattak was in the custody of the military intelligence service. After approximately two years in pretrial detention, he was convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act, a British-era law, allegedly over information he shared with an Irish professor and human rights expert in 2009. Pakistani civil society and international bodies have roundly condemned Khattak’s subsequent conviction in a secret military trial in December 2021, and the U.S. State Department highlighted Khattak’s disappearance in its annual human rights report on Pakistan in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Amnesty International called his conviction “the culmination of a shameful two-year process that has been unjust from start to finish.” The International Commission of Jurists described his conviction as “a gross miscarriage of justice.” And the U.N. Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council said that his detention “is emblematic of how the military justice system is being instrumentalized to repress critical voices and rights activists” and that his “sentencing is an attack against the human rights community in Pakistan and sends a chilling message to civil society activists monitoring and reporting on alleged violations.”
  
We respectfully request Khattak’s release as well as the following information regarding Khattak’s detention:
  
  1. A petition regarding Khattak’s detention was recently filed on his behalf with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Will the Government of Pakistan commit to releasing Mr. Khattak if the Working Group determines that his detention violates international law?
  2. U.N. experts have called for Pakistani “authorities to conduct an independent and thorough investigation into the institutional and criminal responsibilities for Khattak’s disappearance” and to also uphold his “right to redress, rehabilitation and compensation” for the disappearance.
    • Has the Government of Pakistan conducted an independent and thorough investigation into Khattak’s seven-month disappearance and identified the officials responsible? If so, what punishment was given to the officials responsible? If not, why not?
    • Since 2008, Pakistan has been a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and ratification of the Covenant was completed in 2010. Article 9 of the Covenant provides that “[a]nyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.” Khattak was unlawfully arrested and disappeared for seven months. Has the Government of Pakistan provided Khattak with compensation for his disappearance? If not, why not?
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
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Permalink: https://raskin.house.gov/2025/11/raskin-mcgovern-condemn-pakistan-s-imprisonment-of-human-rights-defender-demand-answers