Pakistani students light candles as they pray for the recovery of Hamid Mir, in Multan, yesterday.

IANS/Islamabad

Following complaints from the defence ministry and ISI, Pakistan’s media regulator has slapped Geo News with a notice asking why its operations should not be shut down.

Geo News administration has been asked by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to reply within 14 days as to why it should not be shut down for violating the regulator’s laws, the TV channel reported yesterday.

The notice states that PEMRA received a complaint from the defence ministry April 22 that Geo News has launched a campaign against Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and its officers after the attack on Geo News’s senior editor and the channel’s anchor Hamid Mir April 19, the report said.

ISI alleged that there was a history of airing anti-state content on Geo News.

Hamid Mir was seriously injured when four motor-cycle riding men pumped two bullets into him while he was riding a car on way from Karachi airport to his Geo News office April 19.

Meanwhile, Mir said yesterday he “felt threatened” by intelligence agencies in the days leading up to the attack.

Mir is still recovering in hospital but his brother Amir Mir read a statement from him yesterday evening saying intelligence officials had visited him a few days before the shooting to tell him his name was on an unspecified “hit list”.

“I insisted that they should let me know about the people who had prepared this hit list, but they did not reveal that,” Mir’s statement said. “I told the intelligence officials who came to my house that in present conditions I feel threatened by the ISI.”

No-one has claimed responsibility for shooting Mir, who escaped another assassination bid in 2012 when a bomb was found attached to his car.

Mir said he told Geo management about threats against him. He said the threats came from “state and non-state elements”.

The media campaign group Reporters Without Borders said Mir had told it on April 7 that the ISI was “conspiring... to cause me harm”.

A veteran journalist who interviewed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden soon after the 9/11 attacks, Mir is probably Pakistan’s best-known media figure.

He is known for speaking out against the Taliban and for his willingness to challenge Pakistan’s powerful military, particularly its activities in southwestern Baluchistan province, where it is accused of rights abuses.

“ISI is annoyed because of a program of Capital Talk during the long march of Baluch missing persons leader Mama Qadeer Baluch,” Mir’s statement said.

“I am also aware that ISI is annoyed because of my criticism on secret agencies role in politics.”

The defence ministry’s complaint about Geo accused the channel of a “vicious campaign libellous and scandalous in nature”, saying they were trying to undermine an important state institution.

On Thursday Sheikh Ijaz, the secretary general of Cable Operators Association of Pakistan, said that transmission of Geo had been blocked in some residential areas managed by the military. But he said there had been no general order from the PERMA to interrupt the channel’s transmission.