An Islamabad court has sent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senator Azam Swati, who was arrested in the early hours of Thursday over his tweet the previous day against the army chief, on two-day physical remand.

The former railways minister was arrested from his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad at around 3am. He was presented in the court of Senior Civil Judge Shabbir Bhatti, where the FIA sought his custody on remand for seven days. The court approved two-day physical remand and ordered a medical test.

The tweet

On Wednesday, Swati named General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the army chief, in a tweet after a local court acquitted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza Shehbaz in a money laundering case.

“Mr Bajwa congratulations to you and few with you. Your plan is really working and all criminals are getting free at cost of this country. With these thugs getting free, you have legitimise corruption. How you predict now the future of this country (sic),” he tweeted.

A visibly roughed up Swati spoke to journalists outsider the court. During the brief exchange, he said: “Parliamentarians are being stripped. I am telling the nation this will be your destiny tomorrow.”

He added that he was tortured in custody.

He claimed that he did not violate the constitution and the law and was arrested for “taking one name - of Bajwa - and that is the violation”.

The complaint

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has registered a case against Swati under Section 20 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. It would be read with sections 131 (abetting mutiny or attempting to seduce a soldier from his duty), 500 (punishment for defamation), 501 (printing or engraving matter known to be defamatory), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and 109 (punishment of abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The first information report registered at the FIA’s Cyber Crime Reporting Centre in Islamabad mentions that Swati tweeted with “malafide intentions & ulterior motives” against “State Institutes of The Islamic Republic of Pakistan and its Senior Government Functionaries including Chief of The Army Staff of Pakistan Army”.

It said that Swati’s tweet was “a mischievous act of subversion to create a rift between personnel/s of The Armed Forces and an attempt to harm the State of Pakistan”.

It called Swati’s tweet “a calculated attempt to create hatred in the mind of people and Army Personnel/s against COAS and Pakistan Army and also created distrust towards Judicial System. In such intimidating Tweet/s, the accused Muhammad Azam Khan Swati has attempted to provoke general public and Personnel/s of Armed Forces by trying to create a feeling of ill-will among pillars of the State.”

Condemnation

The PTI leadership was swift to condemn Swati’s arrest, which follows a slew of other arrests earlier in the week including those of Saifullah Niazi, Hamid Zaman and Tariq Shafi.

“Torturing political prisoners has has become a new normal in Pakistan,” tweeted Fawad Chaudhry.

For Hammad Azhar, Swati’s arrest and the Sharif’s acquittal a clear sign of fascism.

Former finance minister and PTI leader Shaukat Tarin said that Swati’s middle of the night arrest indicated there was no tolerance for dissent in ‘democratic’ Pakistan.

The timing and nature of the attack also raised questions from civil society activists.

“What kind of democracy are we where even Senators are arrested on bogus FIR based on Section 20 of PECA that was amended, late at night & tortured in custody? FIA is no more than silencing tool for the State,” wrote Usama Khilji on Twitter.