Thousands of supporters of Pakistan’s imprisoned former prime minister rallied Monday in the country’s volatile northwest to mark the first anniversary of his arrest and demand his immediate release, officials said.
The protest is part of Imram Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI opposition party’s campaign aimed at pressuring the current government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to free him without any further delay.
The rally was held in Swabi, a city in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Khan’s party rules.
More than 10,000 supporters of Khan were seen waving the party’s flags and chanting slogans in his favor in Swabi. Top party leaders in their speeches told the demonstrators that Khan would soon be among them, though they did not elaborate.
It was one of the biggest protests since 2022 when Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in the parliament.
Ali Amin Gundapur, the chief minister in the province, asked the demonstrators to get ready for a march on Islamabad in the coming weeks, as PTI plans to hold a big protest in the capital later this month or early next month. He said PTI would defy any ban if it was not allowed to hold the rally in the nation’s capital.
Khan was arrested on August 5, 2023, after a court in Islamabad handed him a 3-year jail sentence in a graft case. Despite his multiple convictions, Khan remains a leading figure.
In recent months, all of his convictions have been either suspended or overthrown. However, the former premier will remain behind bars as he awaits a slew of cases pending against him, which his party says are fake and politically motivated.
Sharif’s government has denied those accusations, saying Khan has been given the chance of a fair trial.
A panel of UN experts has determined that the detention of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan was arbitrary and a violation of international law, calling for him to be released “immediately”.
In an opinion published Monday, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention raised concerns about multiple cases brought against Khan since he was ousted in April 2022.
It found that his depravation of liberty was “arbitrary” and violated several international laws and norms.
Khan’s “detention had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office”, the working group said.
“Thus, from the outset, that prosecution was not grounded in law and was reportedly instrumentalised for a political purpose,” it said in the opinion, which was dated March 25 and made public Monday.
The working group, made up of five independent experts whose opinions are not binding but carry reputational weight, called on Pakistan’s government to “take the steps necessary to remedy the situation”.
“The appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Khan immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law,” it added.
The experts also called on Pakistan’s government to ensure “a full and independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr. Khan, and to take appropriate measures against those responsible for the violation of his rights”.
