PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen released from prison

PESHAWAR: Manzoor Pashteen, the leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), was released from prison on Tuesday, after a sessions court in Dera Ismail Khan granted him bail in the fifth and last case against him, his lawyer confirmed to Arab News.
“After spending nearly a month in Central Jail, Dera Ismail Khan, Pashteen has won the legal battle and come out of prison. He was granted bail in all five cases after we submitted three different surety bonds of up to Rs300,000 in court,” said the lawyer, Saeed Akhtar, also a PTM leader.
Pashteen was arrested in Peshawar on Jan. 27 on a number of charges, ranging hate speech to criminal conspiracy and sedition.
Jubilant Pashteen delivered a brief speech to PTM supporters who came to welcome him upon his release.
“We fought a legal battle within the constitutional framework for the release of our leader,” said Abdullah Nangyal, a PTM activist. “We have won today.”
Parliamentarian and PTM member Ali Wazir told Arab News he was certain that Pashteen would soon come out of prison.
“The cases lodged against Pashteen were concocted and groundless. Today is our victory and the victory of law and justice. Our struggle for the supremacy of law will continue,” he said.
PTM campaigns against alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Pashtuns and members of other ethnic minorities.
It emerged in 2018, after the killing of an ethnic Pashtun man by police in the port city of Karachi. The killing led to nationwide protests and turned the issue of alleged state violence against Pashtuns into a national debate.
The Pakistani military accuses the PTM of being funded by foreign states, such as India and Afghanistan. The PTM denies any foreign links.
Many PTM supporters are ethnic Pashtuns who hail originally from areas bordering Afghanistan, which used to be the center point of a long insurgency by Taliban and other militants and subsequent operations by the Pakistani military.
Millions of people from the region have been displaced due to the operations.