Former PM Arrested In Pakistan: Former Prime Minister and PTI chief Imran Khan was arrested on Saturday (August 5) from his Zaman Park residence in Lahore. The arrest took place after a trial court in Islamabad convicted him in the Toshakhana case and sentenced him to 3 years in prison. This is not the first time that a former prime minister has been arrested.
In fact, the former Prime Minister has been arrested in this way in Pakistan before. Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy was the fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan. His tenure was from September 1956-October 1957. He was arrested in January 1962. The allegation was that General Ayub Khan refused to support the capture of the government.
Thereafter, through the Electoral Bodies Disqualification Order, he was banned from politics and later in July 1960, he was accused of violating Abdo. In January 1962, he was arrested and put in solitary confinement in the Central Jail in Karachi without trial on fabricated charges.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged
This was followed by the arrest of another former prime minister in the 70s. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was the Prime Minister from August 1973 to July 1977. In September 1977, he was arrested on charges of conspiring to assassinate a political opponent. However, he was later released by Lahore High Court judge Khwaja Mohammad Ahmad Samdani, who said there was no legal basis for his arrest.
Three days later he was arrested again under Martial Law Regulation 12. The regulation empowered law enforcement agencies to arrest a person who was acting against the security. This law cannot be challenged in any court. Eventually Bhutto was sentenced to death and hanged on April 4, 1979.
Benazir Bhutto was also arrested
Benazir Bhutto was the Prime Minister of Pakistan twice (December 1998–August 1990 and October 1993–November 1996). Under the dictatorship of Ziaul Haq (1977–1988), Benazir served as an opposition leader. She arrived in Pakistan in August 1985 for her brother’s funeral and was placed under house arrest for 90 days. At the same time, in August 1986, Benazir Bhutto was arrested for condemning the government at a rally in Karachi on Independence Day.
In April 1999, Benazir Bhutto was sentenced to five years in prison by the Ehtasab Bench and disqualified from holding public office on charges of accepting bribes from a Swiss company. After a long legal battle, arrest warrants were issued against Benazir Bhutto twice in April and October 1999.
Shahid Khakan Abbasi was released
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of the PML-N served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan from January 2017–May 2018. In July 2019, he was arrested on behalf of a 12-member NAB team for alleged corruption while awarding import contracts worth billions of rupees. LNG in 2013 when he was the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources. He was granted bail and released from Adiala Jail on February 27, 2020.
Shahbaz Sharif’s arrest
The current Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif was arrested on 28 September 2020 after the Lahore High Court rejected his bail in the NAB money laundering case. After about seven months, he was released from the Kot Lakhpat Central Jail in Lahore.
