Pakistan’s top court orders immediate release of ex-PM Khan

Supporters of Pakistan's former prime minister Imran Khan remove tear gas shell fired by police to disperse them during a protest against the arrest of Imran Khan, in Lahore, Pakistan, May 10, 2023. (PHOTO / AP)

ISLAMABAD – The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Thursday evening ordered police to immediately release former Prime Minister Imran Khan who was arrested on May 9 on the charges of corruption and corrupt practices.

The verdict was given on a plea of Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party saying the arrest was illegal as it was made at the premises of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) when Khan was seeking protective bail.

The three-member bench of the supreme court, headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial, ordered the immediate release of the PTI chairman, and said he could reapply for protective bail on Friday.

The court directed Islamabad Police to keep Khan in a guest house at police headquarters until then.

The court also directed police to let the former prime minister meet with his family members, lawyers and friends during his stay in the guest house.

At least 10 people have been killed and over 1,750 others injured in Pakistan's clashes between protestors and police since Tuesday following Khan's arrest, hospital and police officials sources told Xinhua.

Multiple sources from police and hospitals, on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that all the deceased are civilians, and the injured include 1,393 civilians and 357 policemen.The clashes erupted after PTI workers thronged to the streets following his arrest.

The country's federal government has deployed the army in the capital Islamabad and the major cities of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces to stop protestors and ensure law and order

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) detained Khan on Tuesday under alleged charges of corruption and corrupt practices from the premises of the Islamabad High Court.

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The country's federal government has deployed the army in the capital Islamabad and the major cities of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces to stop protestors and ensure law and order.

Tensions remained high with troops and police on the streets in major cities. In the eastern city of Lahore, Khan's hometown, where protesters ransacked the house of a top army general on Tuesday, troops held a flag march.

In Islamabad, footage shared by a police official showed military jeeps with mounted guns lined up on the side of a road and soldiers holding assault rifles.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, deputy head of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, speaks with media as he waits to attend a hearing near the police headquarters where former Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan is being kept in custody, May 10, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

Mobile data services remained suspended and schools and offices were closed in two of Pakistan's four provinces.

The army has warned Khan's supporters it will respond firmly if there are further attacks on its assets, saying in a statement on Wednesday that during the violence it showed "restraint, patience and tolerance".

"Such a spectacle has never been witnessed in the last 75 years," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a televised address. "People were made hostages in their vehicles, patients were taken out of the ambulances and later, those vehicles were torched".

Authorities had arrested at least three senior PTI leaders as of Thursday.

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Police have also nabbed more than 1,650 protesters in Khan's home province of Punjab for violence, the police chief's office said in a statement. Some 80 workers of Khan's party were also arrested in the southwestern city of Quetta, police said.

Separately, Khan was indicted by a Pakistani court in an unrelated case on Wednesday for unlawfully selling state gifts during his premiership between 2018 and 2022.

The corruption cases against Khan are two of more than 100 cases registered against him since his ouster last year. In most of the cases, Khan faces being barred from holding public office if convicted, with a national election scheduled for November.

With Reuters inputs