Reports on Tuesday stated that Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, had been arrested at the Islamabad High Court by a paramilitary force. Fawad Chaudhry, a senior official with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, claimed that the 72-year-old Khan had been taken into custody by the country’s anti-corruption body, the National Accountability Bureau.
The former premier was dragged out of the court and into a police vehicle and is now in the custody of the security forces. Chaudhry denounced the arrest as ‘an abduction’. Khan was going for biometric at the IHC when he was taken into custody, according to Geo News. Following his arrest, IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq summoned the Islamabad IG and the interior secretary and directed the additional attorney general to appear before the court.
Officials from the anti-corruption body revealed that Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau had issued arrest warrants for Khan last week in a separate graft case for which he had not obtained bail, something that would protect him from arrest under the country’s laws.
The officials said Khan would be brought to appear before an anti-graft tribunal later on Tuesday.
Late on Monday, Pakistan’s military warned Khan against making ‘baseless allegations’ after he again accused a senior officer of plotting to kill him. The military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) wing issued a statement saying that ‘this fabricated and malicious allegation is extremely unfortunate, deplorable, and unacceptable’.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif weighed in on Twitter, saying ‘His levelling of allegations without any proof against Gen Faisal Naseer and officers of our Intelligence Agency cannot be allowed and will not be tolerated.’
Pakistan’s government has said the assassination attempt on Khan was the work of a lone gunman who is now in custody and who confessed in a controversially leaked video. Khan, however, rejects those findings and insists authorities have refused to accept his attempts to file a so-called first information report (FIR) with police identifying the real culprits.
Khan faces dozens of charges that were brought against him since he was ousted. Ahead of general elections in October, many petitions and appeals are pending before the courts for an earlier vote for some provincial assemblies, usually held at the same time.
Pakistan’s economy has been pushed to the brink of collapse by years of financial mismanagement, exacerbated by a global energy crisis and devastating floods that submerged a third of the country in 2022. The government is battling to revive the next tranche of a $6.5 billion loan deal agreed with the International Monetary Fund in 2019.
The IMF is demanding more stringent reforms, including tax rises and subsidy cuts, likely to rile voters ahead of an election. Pakistan must also win guarantees of bilateral support from friendly nations to unlock the tranche, with China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates already pledging loans.
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