ISLAMABAD: Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a prominent Pakistani politician and close ally of former prime minister Imran Khan, was arrested in the early hours of Thursday after a police complaint was registered against him by the leader of a rival political party.
Ahmed served as the country’s interior minister for two years under Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) administration before its downfall last April in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence.
Last week, in an interview to a local news channel, Ahmed endorsed a statement by the PTI chief that Pakistan’s former president Asif Ali Zardari had paid an unnamed militant organization to have Khan assassinated.
The interview led to a police complaint, which was filed against Ahmed by a leader of Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).
“They broke down the doors, misbehaved, hit my servants, forced me into their vehicle and brought me here,” Ahmed said, describing his arrest in a brief video clip which was shared by the PTI in a Twitter post.
He said that current interior minister Rana Sanaullah was behind his arrest, adding: “We stand with Imran Khan.”
The government has not yet commented on the arrest.
According to local media reports, police officials in Islamabad said they had arrested Ahmed from a highway connecting the federal capital with the mountain resort town of Murree.
However, the politician denied the claim and said he was picked up from his residence in Rawalpindi, which was outside the jurisdiction of Islamabad Police.
On Thursday evening, a district court remanded Ahmed in police custody for two days.
Ahmed’s arrest comes a day after another Khan ally, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, was released after more than a week in custody over a complaint filed against him by the national election regulator.
In a separate incident, anchorman Imran Riaz Khan, widely considered a pro-Khan journalist, was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Lahore in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to his counsel Mian Ali Ashfaq.
Ashfaq told Pakistan’s Dawn that his client was arrested from the Allama Iqbal International Airport by the FIA’s cybercrime wing.
“The details of the case filed against Imran Riaz are not being disclosed,” the lawyer said, adding that the “illegal arrest” would be challenged in court.
A video shared by PTI’s official Twitter account showed the journalist at the FIA’s cybercrime office.
The anchorman was last taken into custody in July last year but released a week later on bail. A total of 17 cases were registered against him in different cities in Punjab, the country’s most populated province, in what he calls political victimization over views critical of the government of PM Shehbaz Sharif and the all-powerful military. Both deny the charge.
