ISLAMABAD: Pakistani law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said in an interview broadcast on Friday that the army had so far not requested that former prime minister Imran Khan be handed to them for a military trial in any of the cases related to attacks on army properties last month.
Since being ousted from the PM’s office in a no-trust vote in April last year, Khan has launched an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the military, which independent analysts say helped him rise and fall from power.
His tensions with the military reached a crescendo last month when Khan was arrested in a land fraud case on May 9, prompting violent nationwide protests in which rioters attacked an air base, military properties, including the army’s headquarters, and burnt a top general’s home. Khan was released on bail four days later but the military has since said it will punish the enactors and masterminds of the violence, including by trying them in military courts under the Army Act and the Official Secrets Act.
In an interview to Urdu News, Law Minister Tarrar said the army had so far asked for 70 people to be handed over for trial before military courts.
When asked if Khan was among these 70 suspects, the law minister said: “Not until today.”
“The decision of where the trial will be held, that is made by the law, this decision will not be the decision of the federal government, it’s not the decision of provincial governments.”
He said cases against Khan related to the violence of May 9 were ongoing, including under the anti-terrorism act.
In a strongly-worded statement released this week and widely seen as a reference to Khan, the army said it was time to tighten the “noose of law” against those who had masterminded the attacks of May 9.
“While the legal trials of perpetrators and instigators have commenced, it is time that noose of law is also tightened around the planners and masterminds who mounted the hate ripened and politically driven rebellion against the state and state institutions to achieve their nefarious design of creating chaos in the country,” the army’s media wing, ISPR, said on Wednesday.
Responding for the first time to widespread accusations that the army was behind a crackdown against Khan, his party and its supporters and carrying out human rights violations, the military called this “fake news and propaganda” that it would defeat with the support of the Pakistani public:
“Unfounded and baseless allegations on Law Enforcement Agencies and Security Forces for custodial torture, human rights abuses and stifling of political activities are meant to mislead the people and malign Armed Forces in order to achieve trivial vested political interests.”
