Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested Tuesday at a court hearing in the capital for one of hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed against him since his ouster last year.
Following Khan’s detention, officials from his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party urged followers to take to the streets, but police warned that an order forbidding gatherings of more than four persons would be strictly enforced.
It was unclear whether Khan was still being jailed at the Islamabad High Court or had been transferred elsewhere.
“Imran Khan has been arrested in the Qadir Trust case,” the official Islamabad police Twitter account said, referring to a graft case.
Hundreds of PTI supporters battled with security personnel outside the court, according to local media.
Khan’s detention comes a day after the military advised him not to make “baseless allegations” after he accused a senior commander of conspiring to assassinate him yet again.
The rebuke late Monday emphasized Khan’s deterioration with the strong military, which backed his ascension to power in 2018 but abandoned its support ahead of a legislative vote of no confidence that removed him last year.
Pakistan is in the grip of an economic and political crisis, with Khan urging the country’s floundering coalition government to hold early elections.
Khan claimed again at a weekend rally in Lahore that a senior intelligence official, Major-General Faisal Naseer, was involved in an assassination attempt last year, during which he was injured in the leg.
According to the military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) wing, “this fabricated and malicious allegation is extremely unfortunate, deplorable, and unacceptable.”
“This has been a consistent pattern for the last year in which officials from military and intelligence agencies have been targeted with insinuations and sensational propaganda to further political objectives,” it stated.
