Policy Alert February 23, 2026
Freedom House Commends UN Working Group Ruling; Urges Immediate Release of Pakistani Human Rights Defender Idris Khattak
Khattak has remained imprisoned for more than half a decade for his efforts to defend Pakistan’s Pashtun ethnic minority from persecution.
WASHINGTON—Freedom House commends the recent opinion of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) finding that the detention of Pakistani human rights defender Idris Khattak violates international law, and calls on the Pakistani government to release Khattak without delay.
“Each day that Idris Khattak spends in prison is a travesty of justice and a violation of international law,” said Brian Tronic, director of the Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners at Freedom House. “The opinion of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is unequivocal—Idris’ detention is unlawful. As a member of the UN Human Rights Council, which oversees the working group, Pakistan has a heightened responsibility to comply with the working group’s opinion. Pakistan must immediately and unconditionally release Idris Khattak.”
Khattak is a well-known Pashtun human rights defender who spent many years documenting human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He has been called “Pakistan’s expert on enforced disappearances.” In November 2019, he was abducted, disappeared for seven months, severely mistreated, and eventually convicted by a military court under the notoriously vague Official Secrets Act—a law that UN experts have described as “yet another means of silencing dissent from human rights defenders.” His conviction is widely regarded as an attack against the human rights community in Pakistan.
In June 2025, Freedom House filed a petition with the WGAD detailing the many violations of Khattak’s rights. In a recently published opinion, adopted on November 10, 2025, the WGAD found that “Mr. Khattak was detained as a result of his work as a human rights defender,” and in particular, for exercising his right to freedom of expression. The WGAD also found that his due process and fair trial rights were repeatedly and egregiously violated: he was held in pretrial detention for two years without legal basis, denied access to counsel, forced to make a false confession, and prohibited from presenting key witnesses. The prosecution also used secret evidence that was shown only to the court but not to the defense. Moreover, the use of a military court to convict him was clearly improper because, as the WGAD noted, “under international law, military tribunals can only be competent to try military personnel for military offences.” The WGAD further noted that the government’s actions after Khattak was initially detained “effectively resulted in his enforced disappearance, which is resoundedly prohibited.”
Given these violations, the WGAD concluded that “the appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Khattak immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations.”
In recent years, Pakistan has experienced a steady and significant decline in political rights and civil liberties. In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2017 report, Pakistan received a cumulative score of 43 of a possible 100, but by 2021, this had declined to 37, and by 2025, to 32.
Freedom House is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to create a world where all are free. We inform the world about threats to freedom, mobilize global action, and support democracy’s defenders.