{"id":5679,"date":"2024-07-22T22:05:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T16:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=5679"},"modified":"2024-07-22T22:05:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T16:20:13","slug":"headquarters-of-pakistan-ex-pm-imran-khans-party-raided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/headquarters-of-pakistan-ex-pm-imran-khans-party-raided\/","title":{"rendered":"Headquarters of Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan’s party raided"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pakistan police raided the headquarters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Monday, a week after the military-backed government vowed to ban the political movement.<\/p>\n

An AFP journalist at the scene saw the headquarters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) sealed off by officers, who led a number of party workers into waiting vans.<\/p>\n

An official from Islamabad Police, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP that they had arrested Raoof Hasan, a founding member of the party and head of its press department.<\/p>\n

Party chairman Gohar Ali Khan, a barrister, said he accompanied Hasan to the police station, after local media and PTI initially reported that he had also been arrested.<\/p>\n

“I was there for Raoof Hassan, he is our senior and I had to be there for him,” the MP told media.<\/p>\n

“We are always ready for an arrest,” he added.<\/p>\n

At least 10 members of PTI or their relatives have been rounded up in the past two months, Hasan told AFP on Saturday.<\/p>\n

He said they had “disappeared” with “no trace”.<\/p>\n

“Seven of them are from my department alone, which they want to cripple because we refuse to stay silent,” he said.<\/p>\n

The government’s information minister said last week it would ban PTI, just days after the Supreme Court made a crucial ruling in the party’s favour that dealt a huge blow to the government.<\/p>\n

Khan has been jailed for nearly a year, but this month an Islamabad judge overturned his illegal marriage conviction while the Supreme Court awarded PTI more parliamentary seats — a move set to make them the largest party in the National Assembly.<\/p>\n

Both cases were considered a major blow to the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who seized a parliamentary majority after February elections by forming a coalition.<\/p>\n

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called the attempt to ban PTI “an enormous blow to democratic norms” and said it “reeks of political desperation”.<\/p>\n

“If pushed through, it will achieve nothing more than deeper polarisation and the strong likelihood of political chaos and violence,” Chairman Asad Iqbal Butt said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Khan, who says the many cases against him have been orchestrated to prevent his return to power, remains languishing in jail on fresh charges of inciting protests and graft.<\/p>\n

A United Nations panel of experts found this month that Khan’s detention “had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pakistan police raided the headquarters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Monday, a week after the military-backed government vowed to ban the political movement. An AFP journalist at the scene saw the headquarters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) sealed off by officers, who led a number of party workers into waiting vans. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5680,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions\/5680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}