ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s aide and ex-human rights minister Dr. Shireen Mazari was arrested on Monday for the fourth time in 10 days, her lawyer said, hours after a high court in Lahore ordered police to release her.
Mazari, 72, is among several leaders of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) who were arrested after angry mobs attacked military installations, set fire to government buildings, and smashed buses to protest Khan’s detention on corruption charges on May 9.
Mazari, who was first arrested on May 12, was subsequently nabbed by police on May 16 and May 18 despite court orders calling her arrest illegal. On Monday, the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) issued an order to release Mazari during a hearing on a petition challenging her arrest. The court ordered police not to rearrest the PTI leader if she was not named in any case.
“72 year old Dr. @ShireenMazari1 arrested by Punjab Police for the fourth time in 10 days,” Barrister Ahsan J. Pirzada, a member of her legal team, wrote on Twitter.
“We have no idea where they have taken her.”
The development takes place amid heightened tensions between Khan and Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which vowed to try the May 9 rioters under military laws.
Notable leaders of the PTI who have been arrested following the May 9 protests are Asad Umar, former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Maleeka Bokhari, and others.
Khan, who has been calling for snap elections since his ouster from office last year, has accused the government of initiating a crackdown against his party supporters to “crush” it ahead of the upcoming general elections, a charge the government denies.
