ISLAMABAD: Ali Wazir, a Pakistani lawmaker and prominent Pashtun rights activist, was released from prison on Tuesday after spending more than two years in custody in a slew of cases, his lawyer told Arab News. 

Wazir was arrested in December 2020 after he was booked along with 12 others in a terrorism case for addressing a rally, wherein he spoke against the Pakistani armed forces. 

Following his arrest in Peshawar, the lawmaker was brought to Karachi where the authorities registered multiple other cases against him. Although a Pakistani court acquitted him in the terrorism case in October last year, Wazir had been in custody of the law enforcement. 

“Ali Wazir has been released from the Central Jail Karachi,” Wazir’s lawyer Qadir Khan told Arab News on Tuesday. 

“He spent 26 months in jail after his arrest in December 2020 and faced one after another FIRs (first information reports), most of which came to the fore during his incarceration.” 

Makhdoom Karim, the Karachi Central Jail superintendent, also confirmed Wazir’s release in a tweet. 

Wazir, a prominent member of a socio-ethnic movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), that campaigns for the rights of the Pashtun people, who it says have suffered from years of conflict between the security forces and militants in the country’s troubled northwest. 

PTM activists previously accused the authorities of unjustifiably detaining Wazir, who had secured bail in most of the cases against him, but still had to stay in prison because of a lawsuit filed against him in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 

Following his release, Wazir moved to the Sohrab Goth area, a Pashtun-dominated neighborhood in the southern port city of Karachi, along with scores of PTM activists, according to his lawyer. 

The lawmaker is expected to address a rally in the vicinity later today, Khan added.