By Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani police detained several lawmakers and leaders of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party in raids a day after it held a major rally in the capital to demand his release, the party and police said on Tuesday.
The 71-year-old former cricket star has been in jail for more than a year since his ouster in 2022 after a falling-out with Pakistan’s military generals, who mostly decide who will rule the nation of 241 million.
Police detained four individuals, a spokesman said, although the party said 13 had been picked up from various places in Islamabad, including some from outside parliament.
Media footage showed police pushing the lawmakers into vehicles in detentions outside parliament that Omar Ayub Khan, the party’s leader of the opposition, called “despicable”.
“Yesterday’s massive protest has sent shivers down the government’s spine,” Khan’s aide, Zulfikar Bukhari, said in a post on X, calling the detentions illegal.
Party chairman Gohar Khan and senior leaders Shoaib Shaheen and Sher Afzal Marwat were among those held, added Bukhari, who is also a party spokesman.
Candidates backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won the most seats in a general election in February but fell short of the majority required to form a government.
His rivals cobbled together a coalition instead to set up a ruling alliance led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The crackdown comes a day after the party’s gathering on the city’s outskirts to demand Khan’s release was marred by clashes between supporters and police that injured a senior police official, the police said.
The party said the violence erupted after the police lobbed teargas canister at a peaceful assembly in a bid to disperse it.
Some party leaders, such as Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur of the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, criticised the ruling alliance and the military speeches at the rally.
“Put your house in order,” he advised the military, warning against any attempt at a military trial for Khan. “I am not scared of the army uniform.”
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Gandapur had threatened to free Khan from jail by force and incited his supporters to engage in violence.
In a message to Reuters a police spokesman confirmed at least four detentions, but there was no official statement on the details of charges or arrests.
(Reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Gibran Peshimam in Karachi; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)