Pakistani Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Radical Islamist Former PM Imran Khan

A court in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for Imran Khan, the former prime minister who was ousted by a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April 2022.

Khan, who has been working on a populist political comeback, faces charges including corruption and terrorism.

Khan, 70, has been directing his political campaign while recuperating at his home in Lahore from a gunshot wound in his leg, which he suffered during an assassination attempt in November. He made his first public appearance in Islamabad since the shooting on Tuesday, marching to three different courts with a mob of supporters in tow to secure bail and immunity from arrest on charges of terrorism, graft, and attempting to murder one of his rivals.

Khan’s luck ran out with Judge Zafar Iqbal, who issued a warrant for his arrest without bail because the former prime minister and onetime cricket star has consistently failed to appear in his courtroom to face charges of concealing his assets and accepting inappropriate gifts from foreign leaders.

Later on Tuesday, the Pakistani Supreme Court modified Iqbal’s warrant to give Khan a very reasonable pre-arrest bail of 100,000 rupees, which works out to about $438 in U.S. currency. Paying this tiny bail will allow Khan to stay out of jail for the time being, averting a potential street battle with his followers.

While seemingly less severe than allegations of terrorism, these were the charges that got Khan banned from running for office for five years in October. Khan dismissed the allegations as a crude act of “political revenge” against him and has resolutely ignored the prohibition against running for office. He evidently believes that merely showing up in Judge Iqbal’s court would grant the case legitimacy it does not deserve.

Pakistani media refers to the improper gift allegations as the “Toshakhana” case, the name of the government agency that is supposed to take possession of all gifts given to Pakistani officials by foreigners. Officials are allowed to use personal funds to purchase gift items held by the Toshakhana at a modest discount from their assessed value.

Khan is accused of failing to report some of his gifts to the Toshakhana bureau and manipulating the rules so that he could buy the gifts he did report for a much lower price than traditionally set by Pakistani law.

Khan did send some lawyers to the Toshakhana courtroom, and when they asked Judge Iqbal to postpone hearings for five days because Khan was busy making appearances in other courtrooms, the long-disrespected judge lost his patience and issued an arrest warrant.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party (PTI) denounced the warrant as a setup, insisting that Khan was slapped with so many “fake cases” that he could not possibly have attended hearings for them all. Senior PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday speculated that the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was parading Khan between so many different courtrooms because it wanted to create a “serious threat to the security” of the former PM and his supporters.

Khan already faces two other arrest warrants, one from the National Election Commission and the other from Islamabad police, who accused Khan of threatening violent reprisals against another judge named Zeba Chaudhry. Khan publicly mused in August that Chaudhry should “prepare herself as action would be taken against her” for ruling against one of his aides in a sedition case.

Khan’s supporters have indicated they are prepared to forcefully resist any attempt to arrest him. A phalanx of PTI members assembled around Khan’s house in February to create a human shield against the police. PTI also has a strategy called “Jail Bharo Tehreek” or “Fill the Jails,” which involves members getting arrested on purpose to overwhelm the penal system so that Khan, with his unique security needs post-assassination, could not be incarcerated.

Adding to the drama in Islamabad, a staunch Khan ally and retired Pakistani Army general named Amjad Shoaib was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on Monday for allegedly inciting violence against state institutions. Shoaib urged Pakistani civil servants to abandon their duties and trigger the collapse of Sharif’s government during a television interview on Sunday.

Khan condemned the arrest of Shoaib as an act of political persecution that “shows democracy and freedom are being totally destroyed in Pakistan to save the regime change conspiracy’s fascist cabal of crooks prepped up by handlers.” In other words, he believes the move to oust him from office was a “regime change conspiracy” cooked up by the United States and carried out by U.S. puppets in the Pakistani legislature.