Foreign journalist allowed to enter Pakistan after 8-hour questioning

Steven Butler, a foreign journalist and senior programme consultant for Committee to Protect Journalists, who had arrived in Pakistan to attend Asma Jahangir Conference, was stopped at Lahore Airport and quizzed for eight hours, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Thursday.

The Immigration Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) questioned the foreign journalist. They let him enter the country after an approval from the Interior Ministry.

The name of Steven Butler was placed on the “stop list” by the previous Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government.

He had been deported when he came to Pakistan in 2019.

Butler had told the media that the immigration official at the airport did not know why his name was on the list.

“You will have to be sent back,” the official had said to him.