ISLAMABAD — The political way forward for Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was thrown into doubt Saturday when police arrested him at house after a court docket handed him a three-year jail sentence for asset concealment.

The jail sentence might see Khan barred from politics because the regulation says individuals with a prison conviction can not maintain or run for public workplace. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf occasion, or PTI, condemned the ruling and mentioned it would problem the choice in a superior court docket.

While a superior court docket can droop the conviction, it’s the nation’s election physique that may in the end disqualify Khan from politics.

The Islamabad court docket issued the arrest warrant after convicting Khan. Police moved rapidly to take the favored politician from his house within the jap metropolis of Lahore to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, senior police officer Ali Nasir Rizvi mentioned. Local data minister, Amir Mir, mentioned Khan was being taken to Lahore airport to be transported to the capital.

It’s the second time the favored opposition chief has been detained this 12 months.

Since his ouster from energy in a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 2022, Khan has been slapped with greater than 150 authorized instances, together with a number of on prices of corruption, terrorism and inciting individuals to violence over lethal protests in May that noticed his followers assault authorities and army property throughout the nation. Khan, cricket star-turned-politician, stays the main opposition determine regardless of his ouster.

PHOTOS: Pakistani police arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan

A PTI spokesman, Rauf Hasan, described the asset concealment trial because the “worst in history and tantamount to the murder of justice.”

Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb denied Khan’s arrest had something to do with elections attributable to be held later this 12 months. She mentioned Khan had been given each alternative to defend himself in opposition to the asset concealment prices. “Instead Imran Khan used the time to delay the court proceedings and went back and forth to the high court and supreme court to halt this case,” she mentioned.

Aurangzeb added that Khan has been “proven guilty of illegal practices, corruption, concealing assets and wrongly declaring wealth in tax returns.”

In Lahore, a gaggle of pro-Khan attorneys reached his Zaman Park house and chanted slogans protesting his conviction and arrest. In the identical metropolis, supporters of a rival political occasion handed out sweets to rejoice the detention.

His former political secretary Aun Chaudhry mentioned Saturday’s occasions will help political stability, whereas Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari described the day’s developments as comeuppance for Khan.

But a former PTI authorities minister, Ali Mohammad Khan, mentioned the opposition chief had been denied justice. “Khan’s conviction will be quashed and he will be released soon,” he mentioned.

Khan’s occasion launched a video message exhibiting him at his Lahore house behind a desk and with the Pakistani and PTI flags within the background. It wasn’t instantly clear when the recording was made.

He informed his supporters he can be in jail by the point the message reached them and that they need to not keep quietly of their properties. “I am not doing this for my freedom,” he mentioned. “I am doing it for my nation, you, your children’s future. If you don’t stand up for your rights, you will live the life of slaves and slaves do not have a life.”

He urged individuals to peacefully protest till they get their rights, specifically a authorities of their selection by means of voting and “not the one like today’s occupying power.”

Pakistan has seen its share of former prime ministers arrested through the years and interventions by its highly effective army.

Khan is the seventh former prime minister to be arrested in Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested and hanged in 1979. The present prime minister’s brother, Nawaz Sharif, who additionally served as prime minister, was arrested a number of occasions on corruption allegations.

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