ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s legal team was not getting access to him in jail, said one of his spokespersons on Saturday night, adding it was the right of his lawyers to meet him in prison and inquire about his well-being.
Khan was barred from holding public office in a case involving the illegal sale of state gifts by the country’s election commission last year in October, which referred the matter to the higher judiciary while recommending holding criminal proceedings against him.
A trial court in Pakistan’s federal capital, Islamabad, announced a three-year imprisonment for him in the matter, commonly known as the Toshakhana – or state repository – case, before the law enforcement agencies arrested him from his Lahore residence and took him to a prison away from the city.
“We have tried our best to meet Imran Khan by contacting the superintendent [jail], Attock, and the additional home secretary,” Naeem Haider Panjutha, the former PM’s spokesperson on legal affairs, said in a short video message. “However, we have not received any response from either of them.”
“We have told both of them that we need to get the power of attorney and other documents signed by Mr. Khan since we have to move various applications and challenge different [court] orders,” he continued. “We also have to challenge the Toshakhana verdict that came today. However, we have not been allowed to meet him so far.”
Panjutha said Khan’s legal team also wanted to visit him since they were concerned about his well-being and wanted to provide him with clothes, food, and other amenities.
However, he informed that the authorities had not given them a “green signal,” though it was his legal team’s right to meet the former prime minister while he was in prison.
One of Khan’s close aides, Zulfi Bokhari, also circulated a video message, saying it was a shame for the country and its judiciary that the former premier’s legal team was not given an opportunity to present its arguments in the Toshakhana case.
عمران خان صاحب سے ملاقات کرنے کے لیے ہم نے سپریڈنٹ جیل اٹک اور ایڈیشنل ہوم سیکرٹری سے رابطہ کیا ہے، لیکن ہمیں اجازت نہیں دی جارہی، ہم وکالت نامے اور دیگر دستاویزات سائن کروانا چاہتے ہیں جو کہ ہمارا قانونی حق ہے، درخواست ہے ہمیں اجازت دی جاۓ
- ایڈووکیٹ نعیم حیدر پنجوتھا… pic.twitter.com/ydA9eCrR7f— PTI (@PTIofficial) August 5, 2023
He also questioned how the judge managed to type up a 35-page judgment within 30 minutes when a document as big could take several hours to write.
Similar concerns were also raised by some members of the legal community who pointed out that Khan could not have been arrested so promptly on the orders of an Islamabad court from his Lahore residence, if due process of law had been followed.
Bokhari revealed that law enforcement personnel broke into Khan’s residence through the back door, adding they beat four or five of his staff members.
He informed that Khan was also roughed up by officials who had arrived at his residence to arrest him.
“They grabbed him, manhandled him, and threw him in a car,” he said.
Bokhari reiterated that Khan’s arrest would be contested and appealed in a high court and the supreme court while urging the local and international media outlets to question whether it was right to detain the PTI leader without a fair trial.
He maintained that the outgoing government and other state institutions were striving to eliminate Khan from the political landscape of Pakistan.
However, Pakistan’s information minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said earlier in the day Khan’s arrest was not politically motivated and was made since he was refusing to respond to the charges against him.
This story was originally published on the Pakistan edition of Arab News.
