ISLAMABAD: Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said on Tuesday ex-interior minister Shehryar Afridi had been arrested, the latest among a growing number of close aides of the popular opposition leader who have been detained since last week.
Khan was arrested by the country’s anti-graft agency last Tuesday in a land fraud case, prompting violent protests across the country, which is already reeling from a crippling economic crisis. He was later released and received bail from a court in Islamabad for two weeks but many senior leaders of his party, including Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Asad Umar, Shireen Mazari and Yasim Rashid remain behind bars.
“Ex-interior minister Shehryar Afridi has been picked up this time, not alone but along with his wife who has no political affiliation,” the PTI tweeted early on Tuesday morning.
Police also arrested Khan aide Fayyazul Hassan Chohan and raided the residence of Sheikh Rashid but could not detain him.
Many of the PTI leaders have been taken into custody using a law related to the maintenance of public order.
Appearing before the Islamabad High Court for the hearing of a petition against his arrest, Hussain, a former information minister and one of Khan’s closest aides, called the case against him “a joke.”
“If we get bail in this case, they will rearrest us in another one,” Hussain told reporters as police brought him to the court for the hearing.
Meanwhile, the IHC declared the arrest of former human rights minister Mazari “illegal” and ordered her immediate release, local media widely reported. An anti-terrorism court in Lahore also refused to grant police physical remand for Rashid, a former health minister and ordered that she be transferred to the police lines hospital on account of poor health.
On Monday, Khan’s PTI had said 7,000 supporters and leaders of the party, including women, had been arrested by the police “without any investigation” following protests unleashed by Khan’s arrest last week.
