Kidnap, torture, murder: the plight of Pakistan’s thousands of disappeared
The abductors moved with an ease and stealth that suggested they had done this before. As Qayyum* and his family slept, 12 masked and uniformed soldiers used a ladder to scale the gate of the house, in an affluent neighbourhood of the Pakistani city of Quetta in Balochistan. The family woke as they burst in but the officers silenced them with an order: don’t scream or we will beat you. One demanded Qayyum’s national identity card.
“Bring your phone and laptop,” barked an officer. A bag was shoved over Qayyum’s head and he was dragged outside and thrown into the back of a car.
Qayyum, a Pakistani government official, did not know why he had been seized, but he knew what was happening. Extrajudicial abductions and enforced disappearances by shadowy military agencies have been a feature of life in Pakistan for two decades. Those suspected of having ties to terrorists, insurgents or activists are picked up and taken to secret detention centres, without trial or official judicial process. Here they face days, months or even years of torture. Some are eventually released, but most are never seen again.
Those weeks in August 2014 were the worst of Qayyum’s life. Deep in a covert detention centre, he was left outside the torture cell to listen as four others were beaten. One after another, the men were brought out, unconscious, bloody and limp, carried on the shoulders of masked men, until finally it was his turn.
“Once I
