Hundreds of members of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party converged on his residence in Lahore on Thursday night to demonstrate against his possible arrest.
Local officials deployed a heavy contingent of riot police in anticipation of violent unrest if Khan is indeed taken into custody.
Khan has been working on a political comeback ever since he was booted from office with a parliamentary “no confidence” vote in April 2022. Khan claimed “foreign interference” manipulated the vote and said the Pakistani people still wanted him to be prime minister.
Khan launched a populist campaign to reclaim the position with the assistance of his PTI party, which instructed its members to resign from their positions en masse and ran Khan as the only party candidate in every special election.
Khan’s “long march” to Islamabad grew rambunctious on several occasions, including a riot in October after the Pakistani Election Commission barred him from holding any elected office due to corruption charges. Khan declared “jihad” against the “mafia” that conspired to keep him out of office, and his supporters took him literally.
Islamabad police charged several senior PTI members, including Khan, with terrorism for inciting public unrest. A previous terrorism charge against the former prime minister, for giving a speech in which he allegedly targeted police officials and a judge for violence, was dropped in September.
Khan was granted bail on the terrorism charge and it was extended in September at his request. He petitioned for another extension to his bail so he could stay out of prison, but the Islamabad anti-terrorism court denied his request on Wednesday, in part because it was out of patience with his refusal to show up for court hearings. Lahore High Court Justice Tariq Saleen Sheikh also threatened to cite Khan for contempt of court because his signatures on some court documents appeared to be forgeries.
The denial of his bail extension request set the stage for Khan to be arrested and incarcerated, so a mob of PTI supporters massed outside his home in the Zaman Park area of Lahore, where he has been recuperating from an assassination attempt in November.
A crowd began forming outside of Khan’s house earlier in the week, chanting slogans against the police and sitting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government.
Many of the demonstrators brandished clubs and said they were prepared to defend themselves against the police. A large contingent of riot police has assembled near Khan’s residence, and police checkpoints have been set up across the Zaman Park area.
Reinforcements for the demonstration poured in after Khan’s bail extension was denied, and on Friday, PTI chief Musarat Jamshaid Cheema threatened nationwide violence if Khan was arrested.
Another PTI representative, Azhar Mashwani, said PTI members would stand shifts around Khan’s house to ensure he was continuously protected against arrest. Mashwani said Khan’s volunteer bodyguards would use violence to thwart any attempted arrest.
The president of PTI’s Lahore chapter, Sheikh Imtiaz Mehmood, called on all faithful members of the party to get to Khan’s residence as quickly as possible to join the anti-police blockade.
Khan gave a televised address from his house on Friday in which he blasted the Sharif administration for trying to stabilize Pakistan’s economy by making a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an approach Kham compared to “treatment of cancer with aspirin.”
Khan referred to the Sharif government as “imported” – i.e. installed by sinister foreign powers – and suggested his enemies are preparing to “destroy the country” to keep him from returning to office.
“People have decided that they will throw out the corrupt cabal of looters in the next elections and that’s why they are afraid of holding the elections,” he said.
Khan said Sharif and his ministers “only want to arrest and torture PTI leaders and workers to break the party and eventually win elections.”
“The people of Pakistan will not let this happen,” he warned.
Besides sending his supporters into a melee against the police, Khan has another strategy to avoid arrest, which he calls “Jail Bharo Tehreek” or “Fill the Jails.” Former Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid said on Friday that he would be among the first of many Khan supporters to voluntarily get himself arrested and fill the jails to bursting if the authorities make a move to arrest Khan.
Rashid added that he expected another assassination attempt against Khan if the ruling party cannot have him arrested.
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