Protests erupted throughout Pakistan on Tuesday after former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested throughout a courtroom look within the capital for certainly one of dozens of instances pending since he was ousted final yr.

His arrest follows months of political disaster and comes hours after the highly effective army rebuked the previous worldwide cricketer for alleging a senior officer had been concerned in a plot to kill him.

Police fired tear fuel and water cannon to disperse Khan supporters in Karachi and Lahore, whereas protesters blocked roads within the capital Islamabad, neighbouring Rawalpindi, and Peshawar.

“Imran Khan has been arrested within the Qadir Belief case,” the official Islamabad police Twitter account stated, referring to a graft case.

Video broadcast on native TV channels confirmed Khan — who has a pronounced limp since being shot throughout an assassination try final yr — being manhandled by dozens of paramilitary rangers into an armoured automotive contained in the Islamabad Excessive Court docket premises.

“As we reached the courtroom’s biometric room to mark the attendance, dozens of rangers attacked us,” stated Ali Bukhari, a lawyer with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) occasion.

“They beat him and dragged him out,” he advised AFP.

It was not instantly clear the place he was taken.

Khan’s arrest comes a day after the army warned him in opposition to making “baseless allegations” after he once more accused a senior officer of plotting to kill him.

The rebuke late Monday underscored how far Khan’s relations have deteriorated with the army, which backed his rise to energy in 2018 however withdrew its assist forward of a parliamentary vote of no confidence that ousted him final yr.

– ‘Democracy has been buried’ –

“The timing of the arrest is putting,” stated Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute on the Wilson Heart.

“The senior military management is tired of repairing the rift between itself and Khan, and so with this arrest it is seemingly sending a message that the gloves are very a lot off.”

Anticipating his arrest, occasion officers later launched a pre-recorded video by Khan wherein he urged supporters to return out in assist of “true freedom”.

“My Pakistanis, by the point these phrases attain you I might have been detained underneath an illegitimate case,” he says within the video.

“One factor ought to turn out to be clear for all of you from that is that elementary rights in Pakistan, the rights given to us by our structure and democracy, have been buried.”

Pakistan is deeply mired in an financial and political disaster, with Khan pressuring the struggling coalition authorities for early elections.

At a weekend rally in Lahore, Khan repeated claims that senior intelligence officer Main-Common Faisal Naseer was concerned in an assassination try final yr throughout which he was shot within the leg.

The army’s Inter-Companies Public Relations (ISPR) wing stated in an announcement that “this fabricated and malicious allegation is extraordinarily unlucky, deplorable and unacceptable”.

“This has been a constant sample for the final yr whereby army and intelligence businesses officers are focused with insinuations and sensational propaganda for the furtherance of political aims,” it stated.

Criticism of the army institution is uncommon in Pakistan, the place military chiefs maintain vital affect over home politics and overseas coverage, and have lengthy been accused of interfering within the rise and fall of governments.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — whom Khan additionally alleged was concerned within the assassination plot — weighed in on Twitter.

“His levelling of allegations with none proof in opposition to Gen Faisal Naseer and officers of our Intelligence Company can’t be allowed and won’t be tolerated,” he stated.

– Rejects findings –

Pakistan’s authorities has stated the assassination try was the work of a lone gunman, who’s now in custody and who confessed in a video controversially leaked to media.

Khan rejects these findings and insists authorities have refused to simply accept his makes an attempt to file a so-called first info report (FIR) with police figuring out the true culprits.

ISPR stated it reserved the precise to “take authorized plan of action in opposition to patently false and mala fide statements and propaganda”.

Khan faces dozens of costs that had been introduced in opposition to him since he was ousted — a tactic analysts say successive Pakistan governments have used to silence their opponents.

Pakistan’s army, the world’s sixth largest, holds undue affect over the nation.

It staged at the very least three coups because the nation gained independence in 1947 and dominated for greater than three many years.

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