On Tuesday, a Pakistan court granted former Prime Minister Imran Khan a weeklong bail in two new cases in which he encounters terrorism charges, officials said. The ruling gave the embattled ousted premier and now popular opposition leader another brief reprieve from arrest.
Since his removal in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last April, the former cricket player turned Islamist politician has become embroiled in a sequence of lawful lawsuits against him, including on terrorism accusations and graft while in office.
The former PM’s standoff with the government of his beneficiary, Current Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, has turned increasingly violent in recent days.
In the latest terrorism cases, Khan is charged with provoking people to roughness when he traveled to Islamabad last Saturday to encounter an accusation in a graft case. His followers fought with police outside the court and Khan never appeared before the judge.
The graft case was later postponed in March. A separate terrorism case against Khan pertains to a rally last year when he verbally threatened a female judge. While Khan denies all accusations against him, saying he is being victimized by Sharif’s government. After Tuesday’s order by a court in Lahore, a close Khan associate repeated those claims.
Fawad Chaudhry, a senior leader in Khan’s political party Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said the terrorism accusations were “politically motivated.”
Since the latest violence on Saturday, police have captured hundreds of Khan’s followers for attacking police in Islamabad and also in Lahore, where his supporters fought for two days with officers earlier last week when police first tried to arrest Khan.
Also, after he was hurt last November in a shooting attack while conducting a rally when a gunman sprayed his vehicle and entourage with bullets, Khan has demanded there are plots to assassinate him. That attack killed one of Khan’s followers and wounded 13.
