Ex-PM Khan party calls aide’s ‘confession’ to using social media against Pakistan’s interests fake

ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Tuesday denied police claims that his senior media manager had confessed to using social media to promote an “anti-state narrative” and “sabotage Pakistan’s sovereignty and peace.”
Ahmed Waqas Janjua was “abducted” from his home last week by plainclothes officers, prompting his wife to file an application before a court for his recovery. Janjua was presented before an anti-terrorism court on Monday and was remanded into police custody for seven days.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of jailed ex-PM Khan has been facing a widening crackdown in recent months, which has included bans on holding rallies and the arrests of party leaders and supporters. On Monday, the PTI’s Information Secretary Raoof Hassan was arrested from the party’s Islamabad office and remanded in police custody for two days on Tuesday.
A police report filed this week quoted Janjua as saying during interrogation that “we [PTI social media team] have been damaging the country daily with the help of internal and external forces, and for it, an anti-state narrative is built daily on social media to damage the country’s sovereignty, integrity and freedom.”
While it was unclear under what conditions Janjua provided the so-called confession, Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari, ex-PM Khan’s key adviser on media, said this was a “fake confession” and Janjua did not say this.
“There is no such thing as a confession while you are in custody, under duress and under threat,” Bukhari told Arab News. “This couldn’t work in court of law because it is obvious whatever they’re trying to do, they are trying to do forcefully.”
Additionally, the police report said the party’s media cell headed by Hasan had been launching daily social media campaigns urging people to go up against the state and the Pakistan army and create an “environment of rebellion” by portraying the government and law enforcement agencies as being responsible for rising militancy in the country.
The latest arrests and charges against the PTI members come as many of its senior members and leaders, including Khan himself, remain behind bars.
Last week, the federal government announced it would move to ban the PTI over involvement in anti-government and anti-military riots last year, for leaking state secrets and for receiving illegal foreign funding. Khan and the PTI say all charges against them are motivated to keep them out of politics and dent their popularity.
Khan has been in jail since August last year, even though all four convictions handed down to him ahead of a parliamentary election in February have either been suspended or overturned.
After being acquitted on the last of those four convictions, authorities rearrested Khan and his wife in an old corruption case on charges of selling state gifts unlawfully. He also faces an accusation of inciting his supporters to attack military installations in May last year. Khan denies all the accusations.
His party secured the largest number of seats in parliament in the February general election despite what Khan’s party says is a military-backed crackdown that aims to keep him out of power. It also won nearly two dozen extra parliament seats in a court ruling last week.
Khan blames his 2022 ouster in a no-confidence vote on Pakistan’s powerful army generals after he fell out with them, a charge the army denies.