Amnesty International has urged Pakistan to release a Pashtun rights activist who was detained immediately after her arrival in the country.
The London-based rights group condemned in a statement on October 12 the arrest of Gulalai Ismail, who was detained upon arrival from London at an airport in the capital, Islamabad.
"Gulalai Ismail must be immediately and unconditionally released. There is no justification whatsoever for her detention or for imposing a travel ban on her. She is being detained solely for her peaceful human rights work," Rabia Mehmood, South Asia researcher at Amnesty International, said.
Ismail is a critic of the Pakistani military's operations in the country's tribal regions, in which many civilians have been killed.
She has been a supporter of the Pashtun Protection Movement, a group which denounces perceived high-handedness by security forces and their operations in the country's northwest.
The group calls for judicial probes into those killed by the military in the name of its war on terror.
