Violent Protests Erupt Across Pakistan Over Arrest of Imran Khan

Protests erupted all across Pakistan on Tuesday after former Prime Minister Imran Khan was detained during a court appearance in the capital of Islamabad.  Over a dozens politically motivated cases that have been filed against him since his ousting from office last year.

His arrest comes after months of political turmoil and only hours after the strong military chastised the former international cricketer for suggesting a top officer was involved in a murder plot against him.

In Karachi and Lahore, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse Khan supporters, while demonstrators blocked roads in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar.

“Imran Khan has been arrested in the Qadir Trust case,” announced the official Islamabad police Twitter account, alluding to a graft investigation.

Khan, who has a noticeable limp since being shot during an assassination attempt last year, was seen being manhandled into an armoured car within the Islamabad High Court premises by hundreds of paramilitary rangers.

“Dozens of rangers attacked us as we approached the court’s biometric room to mark the attendance,” said Ali Bukhari, a lawyer with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

“They beat him up and dragged him out,” he explained. It wasn’t obvious where he was transported right away.

The gloves are off

Imran Khan’s detention comes a day after the military advised him not to make “baseless allegations” after he accused a senior commander of conspiring to assassinate him yet again.

The rebuke late Monday emphasised Khan’s deterioration with the military, which backed his ascension to power in 2018 but abandoned its support ahead of a legislative vote of no confidence that removed him last year.

“The timing of the arrest is striking,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.

“The senior army leadership is uninterested in mending the schism with Khan, so this arrest is likely sending a message that the gloves are off.”

In anticipation of his detention, party organizers issued a pre-recorded video of Khan urging followers to come out in support of “true freedom.”

“My Pakistanis, by the time these words reach you, I would have been detained under an illegitimate case,” he adds in the video.

“From this, one thing should be clear to all of you: fundamental rights in Pakistan, the rights granted to us by our constitution and democracy, have been buried.”

Pakistan is in the grip of an economic and political crisis, with Khan urging the country’s floundering coalition government to hold early elections.

Criticism of Pakistans military establishment

Khan said during a weekend rally in Lahore that senior intelligence official Major-General Faisal Naseer was involved in an assassination attempt last year, in which he was injured in the leg.

According to the military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) wing, “this fabricated and malicious allegation is extremely unfortunate, deplorable, and unacceptable.”

“This has been a consistent pattern for the last year in which officials from military and intelligence agencies have been targeted with insinuations and sensational propaganda to further political objectives,” it stated.

Criticism of the military establishment is uncommon in Pakistan, where army leaders wield substantial power in domestic politics and foreign affairs, and have long been accused of meddling in government rises and falls.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who Khan also accused of being engaged in the assassination plan, responded on Twitter.

“His levelling of allegations against Gen Faisal Naseer and officers of our Intelligence Agency without any proof cannot and will not be tolerated,” he stated.

The Pakistani government has stated that the assassination attempt was carried out by a lone gunman, who is presently in custody and confessed in a video that was controversially given to the public.

Khan disputes those results and claims that authorities have refused to accept his attempts to submit a so-called first information report (FIR) with police in order to uncover the true perpetrators.

ISPR stated that it reserves the authority to “take legal action against patently false and malicious statements and propaganda.”

Khan is facing dozens of charges filed against him since his ouster, a practise that critics say successive Pakistani governments have used to muzzle their opponents.

Pakistan’s military, the world’s sixth largest, wields disproportionate power over the country.

Since the country’s independence in 1947, it has staged at least three coups and ruled for more than three decades.