ISLAMABAD – Pakistani police on Saturday arrested former Prime Minister Imran Khan at his residence within the jap metropolis of Lahore after a courtroom convicted him in an asset concealment case and handed him down a three-year jail sentence.
It’s the second time the favored opposition chief has been detained this yr.
The jail sentence may see Khan barred from politics because the legislation says folks with a legal conviction can not maintain or run for public workplace. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf get together, or PTI, condemned the ruling and mentioned it should problem the choice in a superior courtroom.
Whereas a superior courtroom can droop the conviction, it’s the nation’s election physique that in the end disqualifies Khan from politics.
The Islamabad courtroom issued the arrest warrant after convicting Khan. Police moved shortly to take the favored politician from his residence to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, senior police officer Ali Nasir Rizvi mentioned. It was not instantly clear the place Khan was being taken to.
Since his ouster from energy in a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 2022, Khan has been slapped with greater than 150 authorized circumstances, together with a number of on prices of corruption, terrorism and inciting folks to violence over lethal protests in Could that noticed his followers assault authorities and navy property throughout the nation. Khan, cricket star-turned-politician, stays the main opposition determine regardless of his ouster.
A PTI spokesman, Rauf Hasan, described the asset concealment trial because the “worst in historical past and tantamount to the homicide of justice.”
Data Minister Maryam Aurangzeb denied Khan’s arrest had something to do with elections resulting from be held later this yr. She mentioned Khan had been given each alternative to defend himself towards the asset concealment prices. “As a substitute Imran Khan used the time to delay the courtroom proceedings and went backwards and forwards to the excessive courtroom and supreme courtroom to halt this case,” she mentioned.
Aurangzeb added that Khan has been “confirmed responsible of unlawful practices, corruption, concealing property and wrongly declaring wealth in tax returns.”
In Lahore, a bunch of pro-Khan legal professionals reached his Zaman Park residence and chanted slogans protesting his conviction and arrest.
Pakistan has seen its share of former prime ministers arrested through the years and interventions by its highly effective navy.
Khan is the seventh former prime minister to be arrested in Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested and hanged in 1979. The present prime minister’s brother, Nawaz Sharif, who additionally served as prime minister, was arrested a number of instances on corruption allegations.
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