Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan returns home after arrest, riots

AFP | Lahore

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com    

Pakistan's former prime minister Imran Khan arrived at his Lahore residence on Saturday after being freed on bail following days of legal drama and nationwide riots over his arrest on corruption charges.

Khan was swooped on by dozens of paramilitary troops and arrested during a routine court appearance on Tuesday, triggering violent clashes in several cities between his supporters and security forces.

"The head of the country's largest party was abducted, kidnapped from the high court, and in front of the entire nation," Khan told AFP from Islamabad High Court on Friday.

"They treated me like a terrorist, this had to have a reaction," he said of the protests that followed.

Khan has repeatedly clashed with Pakistan's powerful military since being booted from power, and told reporters after being granted bail that "one man, the army chief" was behind his arrest.

His detention came just hours after he was rebuked by the army for claiming it was involved in an assassination attempt against him last year.

Independent analysts say Khan was brought to power by the military before falling out with the generals.

After his arrest, thousands of protesters began setting fire to government buildings, blocked roads and damaged military installations in a country wracked by a spiralling economic crisis.

The Supreme Court on Thursday declared the arrest on court premises ahead of a bail hearing as unlawful.

Khan was kept in police protection overnight, before appearing at a heavily guarded Islamabad High Court which granted him two week's bail and ordered that he could not be arrested before Monday in any other pending case.

The 70-year-old has become entangled in a slew of legal allegations -- a frequent hazard for opposition figures in Pakistan -- since he was ousted from power in April last year.

 - 'Today is a victory' -

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the former cricket superstar reached his Lahore residence, where he was greeted by jubilant crowds of supporters who threw rose petals over his car.

"They keep trying to silence Khan and keep trying to put him behind bars. But Khan has proven that the one who stands with the truth always wins," 21-year-old supporter Waqar Ahsan told AFP after Khan was granted bail.

Zuneira Shah, a 40-year-old mother of three, feared that "the establishment would keep coming for him".

"Khan is threatening their decades of corruption so of course they will not sit still. It's a long fight ahead, but today is a victory."

The interior minister has vowed to re-arrest Khan, who remains wildly popular ahead of elections due in October.

"If there is a way to arrest Imran Khan (within the bounds of) the court order, then it will definitely be done," Rana Sanaullah told private television channel Geo News on Friday.

The country now seems primed for a "progressively ugly showdown in the days and weeks to come", read an editorial in Dawn, the country's leading English language newspaper.

"None of the leaders, political or institutional, who are invested in this tug-of-war appear ready to take a step back," it said. 

- Thousands arrested -

At least nine people died in the unrest this week, police and hospitals have said.

Hundreds of police officers were injured and more than 4,000 people detained, mostly in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, according to authorities.

Faisal Hussain Chaudhry, a lawyer for Khan, said on Friday that 10 senior PTI leaders had been arrested.

Mobile data services and access to social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube, which were cut shortly after Khan's arrest on Tuesday, were gradually being restored around the country.

The political crisis has simmered for months, with Khan agitating for early elections as a shaky coalition government struggles to pull the country out of a severe economic downturn.

He has accused the government of supplanting him in cahoots with top generals, and made explosive claims that they puppeteered a November assassination attempt that saw him shot in the leg as he campaigned for snap polls.

Pakistani politicians have frequently been arrested and jailed since the country's founding in 1947 but few have so directly challenged a military that holds significant influence over domestic politics and foreign policy and has staged three coups.