ISLAMABAD — ISLAMABAD (AP) —
Pakistani police on Saturday arrested former Prime Minister Imran Khan at his residence within the japanese 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 12 months.
The jail sentence might 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 social gathering, or PTI, condemned the ruling and mentioned it is going to problem the choice in a superior courtroom.
Whereas a superior courtroom can droop the conviction, it’s the nation’s election physique that finally disqualifies Khan from politics.
The Islamabad courtroom issued the arrest warrant after convicting Khan. Police moved rapidly 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 costs of corruption, terrorism and inciting folks to violence over lethal protests in Might that noticed his followers assault authorities and army 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 attributable to be held later this 12 months. She mentioned Khan had been given each alternative to defend himself in opposition to the asset concealment costs. “As a substitute Imran Khan used the time to delay the courtroom proceedings and went forwards and backwards 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 gaggle of pro-Khan attorneys reached his Zaman Park residence and chanted slogans protesting his conviction and arrest.
Pakistan has seen its share of former prime ministers arrested over time and interventions by its highly effective army.
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 occasions on corruption allegations.