Police clash with protesters after former Pakistan Prime Minister Khan arrested

AFP | Islamabad

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com    

Protests erupted across Pakistan yesterday after former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested during a court appearance in the capital for one of dozens of cases pending since he was ousted last year.

His arrest follows months of political crisis and came hours after the powerful military rebuked the former international cricketer for alleging that a senior officer had been involved in a plot to kill him.

Some protesters took out their wrath on the military, storming the residence of the corps commander in Lahore and laying siege to a gate of the army’s general headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse Khan supporters in Karachi and Lahore, while protesters blocked roads in the capital Islamabad, Peshawar, and other cities.

Khan faces dozens of charges since being ousted -- a tactic analysts say successive Pakistan governments have used to silence their opponents.

Video broadcast on local TV channels showed Khan -- who has a pronounced limp since being shot during an assassination attempt last year -- being manhandled by dozens of paramilitary rangers into an armoured car inside the Islamabad High Court premises.

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

“They beat him and dragged him out,” he said.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said Khan had been arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the country’s top anti-corruption body.