ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, a close aide of ousted prime minister Imran Khan, was arrested by police on Thursday, amid worsening political turmoil that has left at least eight people dead and led to the deployment of the army in the country’s capital and three provinces.
A video shared by Qureshi’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Twitter shows plain-clothed men taking him away, with him waving at party workers before departing from the location where he was detained.
The PTI claimed that 66-year-old Qureshi was arrested by the Islamabad police in the early hours of Thursday and transferred to an “undisclosed location”.
His arrest comes two days after paramilitary forces whisked away PTI chief and former premier Khan on the orders of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) officials who barged into a room of the Islamabad High Court on Tuesday.
An anti-corruption court on Wednesday sent the 70-year-old former prime minister on an eight-day physical remand to the anti-corruption watchdog.
Khan’s dramatic arrest on Tuesday sparked widespread violent protests across Pakistan, leaving at least eight people dead and nearly 300 others injured in clashes between protesters and law-enforcement agencies and prompting the authorities to deploy the army in the country’s capital Islamabad, as well as in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces on Wednesday to maintain law and order.
In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said strict action would be taken against “state’s enemies” as he slammed Khan’s PTI for violence that gripped the country after his arrest in the Al-Qadir Trust corruption case.
“The miscreants will be dealt with iron hands. They will be punished according to the law,” the prime minister said and urged PTI protesters to immediately stop “anti-state activities”.
“They attacked sensitive property as if they were enemies. I have never seen such heart-breaking scenes…We will not allow anyone to conspire. We will not let their nefarious agenda succeed,” he said.
His address came after chairing a Cabinet meeting that decided to deploy the army in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and capital Islamabad.
Reports showed that Lahore and Peshawar faced the worst situation with incidents of arson and firings.