Pakistan police raid ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party HQ

Security forces have stormed the offices of the Pakistan Tehreek e-Insaf (PTI) party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The raid on Monday came a week after the government said it planned to disband the party, Pakistan’s largest opposition movement.

A police contingent sealed off the offices in Islamabad. Acting party Chairman Gohar Khan and Information Secretary Rauf Hasan were detained, according to a party spokesperson quoted by the Reuters news agency.

The PTI said Gohar Khan had since been released while a Pakistani police official told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that Hasan remained in custody.

The latter’s arrest came days after he warned that party members were being rounded up. He said 10 had disappeared “with no trace” in the past two months.

“Seven of them are from my department alone, which they want to cripple because we refuse to stay silent,” he said in an interview with AFP.

Crackdown

The crackdown on the PTI follows several court rulings in its favour this month that threaten the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came to power in February with the backing of the military,

The Supreme Court on July 12 ruled that the PTI, which won the most seats in February’s general election but was kept from government by an alliance of military-backed rival parties, should be awarded 23 additional seats in parliament. The judgement deprives Sharif’s coalition of the two-thirds majority needed to push through planned reforms.

On July 13, an Islamabad court overturned Imran Khan’s illegal marriage conviction, meaning the former premier has now succeeded in getting all four convictions handed down to him over recent years suspended or overturned.

However, he remains in jail on new charges of inciting protests and graft, which he said were brought to keep him from power.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced last week that the government would launch a legal bid to ban the PTI, citing accusations including the incitement of violent protests last year and the leaking of classified information.

He also said the government would file treason charges against Imran Khan.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called the government’s move “an enormous blow to democratic norms” and one that “reeks of political desperation”.

“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.

A United Nations panel of experts found this month that Imran Khan’s detention “had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office”.