KARACHI – Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, declared on Wednesday that he would heed a court summons as his supporters continued to engage in violence with security personnel who had arrived to arrest him for failing to appear in a case involving the sale of state gifts.
Security forces used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds of people throwing rocks at Khan’s home in Lahore after the violence broke out on Tuesday. Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, is already unstable due to its economic crisis and need for a bailout from the IMF.
A lower court in the capital Islamabad had last week issued an arrest warrant against Khan for defying orders to present himself in court to defend charges that he unlawfully sold state gifts given to him by foreign dignitaries while he was prime minister from 2018 to 2022.In a tweet, Khan said he had signed a “surety bond” that would guarantee his appearance in the court by a March 18 deadline, and senior aide Fawad Chaudhry said Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, had asked the court to stop the police from arresting him.”We have asked the police to wait until the court decision on the matter,” added Chaudhry, a former information minister.
It was not immediately clear when the court would decide.The legal proceedings against Khan began after he was ousted from office in a parliamentary vote early last year. Since then, he has been demanding a snap election and holding nationwide protest rallies, and was shot and wounded in one of these rallies. Current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has rejected Khan’s demands, saying the election would be held as scheduled later this year.Khan, 70, a former international cricketer turned politician, still enjoys a large support base in Pakistan. In a video message broadcast by his party, he blamed the government for trying to arrest him, and called on his supporters to continue to fight.”If anything happens to me, or I go to prison, or they kill me, you have to prove that this nation will continue to struggle even without Imran Khan,” he said.In a statement.
