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Islamabad — Pakistan’s main cities had been paralyzed this week by violent protests and riots sparked by the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a nationwide cricket legend-turned political opposition chief, on corruption prices. Khan stays massively fashionable within the nation of 230 million regardless of being compelled out workplace final yr with a no-confidence vote in Pakistan’s parliament, and his arrest has infuriated his supporters.
The streets had been quieter Thursday after two days of violence that left at the least eight folks useless. However the nuclear-armed Asian nation remained on tenterhooks after most leaders of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) political celebration had been taken into custody. The nation’s {powerful} military and present prime minister, who’s backed by the army, warned protesters Wednesday that any additional unrest can be handled harshly.
This is what to know concerning the chaos, how Pakistan bought right here, and what might come subsequent:
Who’s Imran Khan?
Imran Khan, 70, is was the Prime Minister of Pakistan for 4 years, till his ouster in November 2022. He stays the chief of the principle opposition celebration, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), which implies Motion for Justice in English.
Khan established the celebration after retiring from a glittering profession because the captain of Pakistan’s nationwide cricket workforce. He led the workforce to win the Cricket World Cup in 1992, cementing his standing as a nationwide hero.
Disillusioned by widespread corruption in Pakistani politics, he left the sporting world to arrange his political celebration in 1998. A decade later, he was lastly elected as prime minister in 2018, having fun with the backing of the nation’s omnipotent army. However he has since fallen spectacularly out of favor with the military’s leaders, and was voted out by parliament final yr.
Why was Imran Khan arrested?
Sarcastically, having been an ardent campaigner towards corruption and bribery, Khan now faces a sequence of graft and corruption circumstances.
Pakistan’s Inside Minister Rana Sanaullah advised reporters Khan was arrested this week on the orders of the nation’s fundamental anticorruption physique, the Nationwide Accountability Bureau (NAB). He stated Khan and his spouse Bushra had been suspected of receiving land value round $24.7 million from a developer that had been charged with cash laundering by British authorities.
Sanaullah stated U.Okay. authorities had returned $240 million to Pakistan in reference to the case, and that Khan was accused of returning that cash to the land developer as an alternative of protecting it within the nationwide treasury when he was the premier.
Khan vehemently denies all wrongdoing and insists all the fees towards him — which embody greater than 100 separate circumstances introduced towards him since his 2022 ouster — are a ruse to maintain him from contesting elections scheduled to be held in November this yr.
Khan is the seventh Pakistani prime minister within the nation’s historical past to be arrested on corruption prices.
Khan taken to Pakistan’s Supreme Court docket
Pakistan’s Supreme Court docket heard a petition Thursday from Khan’s lawyer, who demanded the politician’s launch and known as his Tuesday arrest unlawful. The court docket expressed displeasure over the way in which Khan was taken into custody in one other courtroom earlier within the week, and ordered authorities to deliver him in earlier than the excessive court docket bench inside an hour.
Amid hypothesis that the Supreme Court docket might order his launch, nationwide Data Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb advised reporters in Islamabad that it might be “unfair” for the highest court docket to intervene is such a fashion. Aurangzeb famous the violence instigated by Khan’s supporters this week and stated a launch order can be tantamount to a “license to kill to everybody.”
What occurs subsequent, and why does it matter?
The confrontation between Khan’s supporters and the ruling coalition authorities is prone to intensify once more forward of his subsequent court docket look on Might 17, when his pre-trial detention can be reviewed. If the decide decides to launch Khan, he and the PTI could also be emboldened and he would probably return to his dwelling within the metropolis of Lahore, the place his supporters might extra successfully attempt to defend him from one other arrest.
If the political turmoil round Khan continues, it might derail the nationwide elections deliberate for November.
Pakistan’s army has dominated the nation for almost all of its 75-year historical past, and most observers consider the military generals nonetheless pull the strings of its civilian authorities. Many Pakistanis worry the military might transfer to overthrow the civilian authorities and impose martial legislation if the unrest continues and army services once more come below assault.
The impoverished nation is mired in a deep and deepening financial disaster, in the meantime, with meals inflation working above 36%. Many specialists consider the federal government is on the verge of defaulting on its worldwide debt funds, which might set off an entire financial meltdown. The worth of the Pakistani rupee hit an all-time low towards the U.S. greenback Wednesday, and it continued its precipitous fall as buying and selling started on interbank markets Thursday.
The instability sparked by Khan’s arrest has added to a way of impending catastrophe within the nation, and the rapid query is how the army will reply to any new flare-up of the protests.
If the generals take a heavy-handed method to the unprecedented problem to their energy, it might result in a wider inner battle, and a stability disaster in a nuclear-armed nation that has tense relations with its nuclear-armed neighbor India can be a trigger for concern around the globe.
CBS Information’ Tucker Reals contributed to this report.
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