ISLAMABAD, 22 November 2007 — Pakistani authorities released Imran Khan yesterday, his spokesman said, days after the cricketer-turned-politician was detained during a round-up of thousands of people protesting emergency rule.
Imran was arrested last week after trying to start a student uprising against the imposition of emergency rule.
“Our party workers in (the eastern city of) D.G. Khan told me that he has come out of jail,” Imran’s spokesman Hafeezullah Khan Niazi told Reuters. The government freed 3,400 people, including lawyers and political workers, on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, former Judge Wajihuddin Ahmad, one of the candidates in the Oct. 6 presidential elections, was detained in Islamabad yesterday. Wajihuddin, senior lawyer Athar Minalaha, and a number of human rights activists were going to meet sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry when Wajihuddin and Athar Minalaha were arrested by police.
“My brother was taken to Adiala Jail,” said Fauzia, Athar Minalaha’s sister. Athar has been arrested under maintenance of public order (MPO). “We do not know where Justice Wajihuddin has been taken,” Fauzia told Arab News.
Police also stopped Iftikhar Chaudhry from leaving his compound.
Chaudhry has been under effective house arrest since Nov. 3 when he and 13 other judges refused to swear an oath under the state of emergency.
Chaudhry tried to leave the enclave in Islamabad where his house is located after the Interior Ministry said there were no restrictions on their movement, said Rana Bhagwandas, another sacked Supreme Court judge.
“Justice Chaudhry said he would come out at 8 a.m. and this morning when we came out in the compound we saw a massive police presence. A magistrate was also at the gates,” Bhagwandas told AFP.
“No one was allowed to leave the compound. Iftikhar Chaudhry also tried to come out of his house but he was not allowed,” added Bhangwandas, one of those sacked for refusing to take the oath.
Police stopped journalists from approaching the compound and erected barricades across the road leading to it, an AFP reporter saw. An Interior Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that the sacked judges were “free to go from their homes, they are free to move.” Bhagwandas said he believed the government was taking harsh measures because it was “frightened.”
“We have never seen this kind of method being used on senior judiciary in the past history of the country,” he added. “We do not think they can survive for long. They will be doomed.”
Police, Journalists Clash
Police yesterday baton-charged and tear-gassed journalists protesting against emergency rule in the city of Faisalabad, leaving 10 injured, witnesses and officials said.
Two of them were seriously hurt and a number others were arrested.
Some 150 journalists wanted to rally outside the city’s press club against strict media curbs under the state of emergency when police took action.
“Police fired tear gas shells and mercilessly baton-charged journalists,” Muhammad Yusuf, a senior member of the Faisalabad Union of Journalists, said.
He told AFP a tear gas shell hit a woman on the back, while another journalist received multiple injuries because of the baton charging. A local police official said a few reporters were arrested. He did not give a figure, but Yusuf said 16 had been taken into custody.
In Quetta, 25 journalists were detained for trying to start a similar protest, senior police officer Raja Ishtiaq told AFP.
Witnesses said the detainees, including an AFP reporter and photographer, were bundled into waiting vans when they emerged from the press club chanting slogans against emergency rule.
