Thread by @worqas

.@washingtonpost @elopezgross, here is a 🧵 explanation of what just happened in Pakistan and how i believe your columnist @HamidMirPAK is involved in a cover-up about the blackmailing of a senator in Pakistan.

A few weeks ago Pakistani senator @AzamKhanSwatiPk posted a tweet that mentioned the name of Pakistan's all-powerful Army Chief, Gen Bajwa. Since that day, his life became a living hell.
First he was abducted by the Police without warrants. He was then handed over to

A known unknown intelligence agency. Here, he was stripped and tortured and photographed and humiliated. These are all his allegations, but instead of any investigation, the govt has ignored him officially. Unofficially, they kept trying to make his life hell.

Today, the Senator did a press conference. In that press conference he broke down and cried. He said his daughter called him on the phone and told him, theough tears, that she received a video from an unknown number.
In that video was the Senator and his wife, her mother, in the

Privacy of their bedroom.
The video was a message to the senator to back off from criticizing the most powerful undemocratic forces in the country.
Senator Azam Swati has proven to be extremely brave throughout all this. Instead of backing down, he decided to go public.

So today, he did a press conference and told this whole story. By doing so, he has exposed the depravity of those in power in Pakistan and their heinous illegal acts.
Exposing this is not a small thing for someone in Pakistan.
He has risked his life by saying these things.

However, immediately after the press conference your columnist @HamidMirPAK tweeted that he too has seen the video very closely and it is fake.
The aim, it seems, was to dilute the effect of the Senator going public. The senator was not supposed to do that, he was supposed

To be afraid.
So your columnist was used by those in power to suddenly claim that the video, that nobody has the knowledge of prior to the press conference, is not real.
How did Mr Hamid Mir come to posess that video in the first place?
He claims the video is on "dark web" but

As any independent expert would verify, you cant just go and find something on the "dark web" immediately after a Senator's press conference exposing the info for the first time.
This is not the first time Mr Mir has been involved in such dubious claims.

This is a pattern that has been repeated over and over again. In Pakistan you can get away with it because of the sorry state of the media and total Mil/Gov control.
However, due to American editors' lack of knowledge about the local dynamics, same Mr Mir can pretend to be

A honorable journalist on pages of WaPo.
His contribution to Pakistani journalism in the past aside, this pattern of behavior from him is condemnable. It is not hard for WaPo to investigate this and do the right thing.