Khawar Mehdi Rizvi is a freelance journalist & a filmmaker from Pakistan, who came to the US in 2004 as a Knight Fellow at the invitation of University of Maryland school of Journalism.

In 2003, Khawar was illegally detained and tortured by the Musharraf regime for trying to report on the hideouts of Taliban fighters in areas bordering Afghanistan & Pakistan. He was tried by an anti-terrorist court under sedition & conspiracy charges. Under General Zia-ul-Haq military regime in the eighties, Khawar was jailed for over four years for participating in the people's struggle to restore democracy in Pakistan.

For the last twenty years, Khawar has reported extensively on the issues relating to the rise of Islamist militants as an aftermath of Afghan Mujahdeen's armed struggle to expel Soviet Union from Afghanistan that was funded and organized by US and its allies including Pakistan. He has researched and produced several long reports, reportage and investigative stories for print and electronic media with a primary focused on the rise of radical Islamist ideology in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan & Pakistan, and on the transformation of Pashtun society and comeback of Al Qaeda in the tribal belt.

As a peace activist, Khawar contributed in the formation of South Asia Free Media Association, (SAFMA ), and was elected as the first information secretary for its Pakistan chapter in 2002. As an assistant editor of the Current Affair's section of Pakistani daily The News, Khawar has organized several seminars, conferences, and meetings on crucial national and regional  issues including nuclearization of South Asia and first ever parliamentary conference between Indian and Pakistani elected representatives, in February 1999.