Islamabad police raid headquarters of ex-PM Khan party, arrest official over ‘anti-state propaganda’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s police on Monday raided the headquarters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in Islamabad and arrested a top official of the party for involvement in anti-state propaganda, the interior minister said.
PTI social media accounts shared videos of dozens of policemen surrounding the PTI secretariat in Pakistan’s federal capital of Islamabad and leading away PTI Information Secretary, Raoof Hasan.
Pakistan’s interior ministry confirmed Hasan’s arrest and said the Islamabad police and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) raided the PTI digital media wing based on initial investigation and analysis of party’s digital content.
“The PTI is involved in anti-state propaganda,” the interior ministry said in a statement. “A JIT [joint investigation team] is being constituted [to investigate the allegations].”

Authorities also briefly detained PTI Chairman Gohar Khan, who is also Khan’s lawyer, on Monday but released him later, Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari, Khan’s key adviser on media, told Arab News.
The raid at PTI headquarters and the arrest of the party’s information secretary comes days after several other PTI members, including the party’s top media manager Ahmed Waqqas Janjua, were arrested by authorities.
An anti-terrorism court on Monday remanded Janjua into police custody for seven days after the investigating officer said he was found in possession of explosives during the arrest and they wanted to probe his alleged links with outlawed organizations, according to the PTI and Janjua’s lawyer.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Ataullah Tarar last week said the government planned to ban the PTI, days after the Supreme Court made a crucial ruling in the party’s favor 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 government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has been leading a weak coalition since the February 8 election.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) described the attempt to ban the PTI as “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,” HRCP Chairman Asad Iqbal Butt said in a statement.
Khan, who says the 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 this month found that Khan’s detention “had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office.”