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 several party workers into waiting vans.
Pakistani media initially reported party chairman Gohar Ali Khan, a barrister, was among those taken away.
However, an official at Islamabad Police, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP that they had not arrested him.
The official confirmed the arrest of Raoof Hassan, a founding member of the party and head of its press department.
“Raoof Hasan was arrested but the police did not arrest Gohar Ali Khan,” the police official said.
In the past two months at least 10 members of PTI or their relatives have been rounded up, Hasan told AFP on Saturday. He said they had “disappeared” with “no trace”.
“Seven of them are from my department alone, which they want to cripple because we refuse to stay silent,” he said.
The government’s information minister last week said 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.
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.
Both cases were considered a major blow to the coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came to power in February with the backing of the military, according to analysts.
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”.
“If pushed through, it will achieve nothing more than deeper polarization and the strong likelihood of political chaos and violence,” Chairman Asad Iqbal Butt said in a statement.
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.
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.”
