LAHORE, Pakistan—Two U.S. human rights activists who had sought the release of a prominent Pakistani lawyer detained under the country's state of emergency were arrested in this eastern city Tuesday.
Police traveling in two cars picked up Medea Benjamin and Tighe Barry near the Holiday Inn, said Amir Sohail, joint secretary of the Punjab Union of Journalists who was with the two Americans at the time.
Elizabeth Colton, press attache at the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Islamabad, confirmed the arrests. She said the two had contacted the U.S. mission in Lahore by phone and it was providing assistance.
A police official in Lahore, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, said the arrest order came from "higher-ups." He said the two Americans were likely to be deported.
Pakistani newspapers reported over the weekend that the two activists had been staging a vigil in Lahore to protest the house arrest of Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
Ahsan was among thousands of lawyers and opposition workers detained after President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution Nov. 3, drawing international condemnation. Most detainees have been released, but some high-profile Musharraf critics, such as Ahsan, remain under arrest.
Musharraf justified the state of emergency as a necessary measure to curb judicial activism and Islamic extremism, but critics believe it was a step to prevent the Supreme Court from challenging the legality of his presidential re-election by legislators last month.
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