Political Prisoners Watch: Enforced Disappearance

Enforced disappearance has been described by the United Nations as “a particularly heinous and complex violation of multiple human rights,” including the right to life, the right to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right to recognition as a person before the law.

UN Secretary General António Guterres has observed that “enforced disappearance is rife across the world.” Certain countries, however, have “a systematic practice of enforced disappearance,” and Pakistan is a clear example. The country’s own National Commission for Human Rights has acknowledged that the “practice of enforced disappearance is rampant all across the country,” and civil society organizations have documented how enforced disappearances are “routinely used by the Pakistani authorities as a tool to target dissidents and human rights defenders.” Between 2010 and August 2025, 10,592 cases were registered with the government-created Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances. The majority of these took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Balochistan, though the actual number of disappearances in these regions is believed to be higher.

One of the most well-known cases of enforced disappearance in Pakistan is that of Idris Khattak, a human rights defender who spoke out against arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and other abuses in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and elsewhere. In a bitter irony, he is known as “Pakistan’s expert on enforced disappearances.” On November 13, 2019, Khattak was abducted from his car by plain-clothed security agents and, for the next seven months, subjected to the very treatment that he had spent decades documenting and fighting. He was held incommunicado, with no contact with the outside world; he was denied access to counsel, including during interrogations; and he was repeatedly tortured and mistreated. During this time, his family did not know whether he was alive or dead—they made numerous inquiries with a variety of government agencies, but all of them denied knowledge of Khattak’s whereabouts or condition. In June 2020, over seven months after his abduction, the government of Pakistan finally admitted that he was in the custody of the country’s military intelligence.

In November 2021, following trial proceedings marred by egregious due process violations including “secret” evidence presented by prosecutors and severe limitations imposed on defense lawyers, Khattak was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison, where he remains today. This year, Freedom House filed a petition with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) on Khattak’s behalf, asking the WGAD to declare his detention arbitrary and unlawful.