Pakistan’s former leader, Imran Khan, is arrested

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested on Tuesday outside the High Court in Islamabad, the capital.

He was arrested on charges of corruption, “which he says are politically motivated,” BBC reported.

Why was former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan arrested?

Khan was “accused of money laundering and faces a number of other charges in separate cases, all of which he has rejected,” according to The Washington Post.

A day before his arrest, Khan received “a rare public rebuke” from “the powerful military” for repeated claims that a senior military official was attempting to assassinate him, and that the military’s former chief was behind removing him from power in April 2022, per Reuters.

Khan’s political party — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or Movement for Justice — claims there was a political motive behind the arrest. Khan was attempting to run again after being ousted in April 2022, and he was performing higher than expected in by-elections in October.

What did Imran Khan’s supporters do after his arrest?

Supporters of Khan took to the streets to protest his arrest and “appeared to overrun a gate leading into the compound of Pakistan’s military headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi,” per NPR.

Islamabad police issued a ban on demonstrations, but Khan’s supporters have been known to ignore such calls in the past, per NPR.

“There’s going to be rising temperatures, potential conflict, hopefully limited pockets of violence, hopefully nothing too serious, but at this point, whether, for better or worse, a lot will depend on the PTI’s leadership,” columnist Mosharraf Zaidi told NPR, referring to the acronym of Khan’s political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf.