Lahore. Apr 3: The Army-backed Anti-Narcotics Force of Pakistan Friday arrested the-editor-in-chief and owner of a daily. Frontier Post, on charges of drug-trafficking raising hues and cries from his family that it was an assault on press freedom.

Afridi who runs what was once one of Pakistan leading English newspapers, the first from the North Western Frontier to have made a mark at the national level, was arrested outside a five star hotel in the provincial capital early in the morning when he was sitting in his Mercedez Benz along with two of his gunmen and 20 kg of hashish was seized from nis possession. The Anti-Narcotics Force, whose operations are managed and run practically by the Armed Forces, was quick to make the point that it was not a politically-motivated action.

"The army is totally out of politics and it is not a political-driven case. We have been observing Afridi for some time and this time we acted on a tip-off that he was about to smuggle drugs abroad, we caught him

red-handed." director of the ANF Punjab headquarters. Brigadier Riazullah Khan told a press conference.

He also said that Afridi then told the ANF about 620 kg hashish which was recovered from a truck in Faisalabad.

The accused's son. however contested the claim in a press statement, saying "in the presence of so many traffickers and carriers in this country no sane person will run the risk of carrying drugs himself." He also denied the ANF claim that on his father's information a bigger quantity of hashish was recovered from a vehicle in Faisalabad.

The Frontier Post which for the last two years or so has been under financial strain was established in the late eighties and soon became a reputable newspaper attracting Pakistan’s leading names in Journalism to work for it. It has had a tradition of being fiercely independent though question marks have always hung on the sources of its funding.