All sensitive arrests are generally greenlit by political leadership, but the protocol seems to have been dispensed with in this case
By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Top government personalities at both federal and (Punjab) provincial level reportedly professed ignorance as to who had greenlit or ordered the Saturday arrest of Dr Shireen Mazari, a close aide of the ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Leaders of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) took to breathing fire against the government immediately after the news of the arrest broke, but the high drama ended shortly after it started when Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz ordered her release.
Officials of the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) confirmed to media Mazari had been taken into custody.
Mazari’s daughter Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, who has made a name as a defender of human rights, said in a tweet her mother had been “beaten and taken away by male police officers”.
“All I have been told that Anti-Corruption Wing Lahore has taken her,” she added.
However, video clips doing the rounds of social media showed Mazari, who was Minister for Human Rights in the Khan cabinet, being arrested by a contingent of women in Islamabad police uniform. Leading the charge was a woman in buff burqa, a royal blue scarf, and a facemask.
Journalist Talat Hussain took to Twitter to highlight the weirdest aspect of the episode. He said most persons in authority that he had spoken to said they had no clue about Dr Mazari’s arrest – and that they were trying to find out who has done this.
Even in criminal cases, arrest of a prominent political personality has to be greenlit by the political leadership at the highest level. That protocol, however, does not seem to have been followed in this case, which is very unusual.
Dr Mazari is known to have recently badmouthed the country’s military leadership over Twitter multiple times. Her daughter Imaan, in her brief remarks to media persons outside Islamabad’s Khosar police station, said she did not know who was behind the incident but it fit the pattern of arrests orchestrated by the establishment.
Responding to the news of Mazari’s arrest, former Prime Minister Imran Khan said Shireen was brave and fearless and if the government believed it could “coerce her through this fascism”, it had made a miscalculation.
Imran said the PTI would protest today and he would announce the date for the party’s planned long march to the capital after a meeting of the core committee tomorrow.
Prominent among PTI leaders speaking fervently against Mazari’s arrest were Fwad Chaudhry, Babar Awan, Shafqat Mahmood, Farrukh Habib, and Shehbaz Gill.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson, MPA Malik Ahmad Khan, said that Shireen’s family “tampered” with land records and “forcefully took it back from poor farmers”.
“According to the report of the Federal Land Commission, action was taken against the revenue officers in the area at that time and Shireen Mazari was the beneficiary. The land is in [her family’s] possession. There are more than 200 petitioners,” he said in a press conference in Islamabad.
Khan added that investigation should be conducted into the “blatant fraud”.
He said the case was registered in March when the PTI was in power. “Warrants had been issued. There was a judicial order to arrest. We are not the complainants but justice will be done.”
The spokesperson disclosed that dozens of cases had been registered against Mazari’s family in 2008 and 2013, in addition to an FIR lodged this March.
“We are specifically saying that they forged documents, destroyed revenue records, grabbed land, and filed incorrect information.” He also called the former minister a “fraudulent character and [a] bad-mouth”
PML-N leader Ataullah Tarar, who addressed the press conference alongside Khan, advised the PTI that they should “not worry”, using Imran Khan’s famous Urdu-language sentence “aap ne ghabrana nahi hai”.
From the ranks of Pakistan Democratic Front (PDM), Maryam Nawaz Sharif was among the first to respond, telling Geo News, “The news of Shireen Mazari has not made me happy”.
PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar strongly condemned the incident and said the detention was “deplorable and the worst form of political oppression”.
OLINE ADDS: The Islamabad High Court has ordered the authorities to produce PTI leader Shireen Mazari by 11:30pm tonight.
The court reopened after the end of office hours to hear a petition from the PTI against the arrest of Shireen Mazari, who was allegedly abducted near her house in Islamabad earlier in the day by an anti-corruption department team from Dera Ghazi Khan.
The court has also summoned the federal interior secretary, Islamabad IGP, and deputy commissioner.
The writ petition has been filed by Mazari’s daughter Eman Zainab through PTI lawyers under Article 199 of the Constitution which allows a petitioner to move a high court for the enforcement of any of the Fundamental Rights.
The PTI counsels in their petition have pleaded that the court issue an order for the production of Shireen Mazari.
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