ISLAMABAD: Top leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of jailed former premier Imran Khan were arrested on Monday from the party’s Islamabad office, according to police, party officials and visuals widely shared on social media.
PTI social media accounts shared videos of dozens of policemen surrounding the party’s Islamabad secretariat on Monday morning, while visuals of the party’s information secretary, Raoof Hasan, being led away by police widely circulated online.
Islamabad police spokesperson Taqi Jawad and Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari, Khan’s key adviser on media, confirmed to Arab News that Hasan and PTI Chairman Gohar Khan, who is also Khan’s lawyer, had both been arrested but that Gohar was later released.
“Barrister Gohar himself announced that he was not arrested by police and he is free, while Raoof Hasan was taken by security forces in a joint operation by the FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) and Islamabad police,” Jawad told Arab News. “I am taking details of the charges against him and will share with the media.”
Hasan’s arrest comes after those of several other PTI members in the last few days, including the party’s top media manager Ahmed Waqqas Janjua.
Bukhari said an anti-terrorism court remanded Janjua today, Monday, into police custody for seven days. According to the PTI and Janjua’s lawyer, the investigating officer said explosives were recovered during Janjua’s arrest and links with outlawed organizations would be probed.
“We demanded that at least family should be given right to visit him (Janjua) and the judge said that he will write it in the order,” Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, Janjua’s lawyer, told Arab News. “Now we will pursue the case further against the remand order.”
The federal government of PM Shehbaz Sharif last week announced plans to ban the PTI and moved the country’s top court to press treason charges against Khan.
Khan came to power in 2018 and was ousted in 2022 after what is widely believed to be a falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military, which had helped propel him into office. The army denies political interference.
Since his ouster, the PTI founder and his party have faced an ever-widening state-backed crackdown and Khan himself has been in jail since August last year. He was acquitted earlier this month in one of the last standing convictions against him but was not freed after authorities issued new orders to arrest him in another case involving riots by his followers in May last year.
Khan, arguably the country’s most popular politician, says all legal cases are motivated to keep him out of politics and dent the popularity of the PTI.
The convictions against him had ruled him out of Feb. 8 general elections, which all candidates from his party were forced to contest as independents after the election commission denied the party its iconic symbol of a cricket bat on technical grounds.
Despite the setbacks, Khan-backed candidates won the most seats in the polls but could not form the government, which is now being led by Sharif’s PMLN party in coalition with other parties.