By Staff Reporter
RAWALPINDI: Leaders of opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, including a former provincial minister, Taimur Saleem Jhagra, staged a protest outside Adiala Jail on Thursday after being denied a meeting with the imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan.
The demonstration followed the use of water cannons early Wednesday to disperse PTI protesters, including Khan’s family members, who had been holding a sit-in near the prison after another denied visit. A court order from the Islamabad High Court on March 24 mandated that Khan be allowed meetings twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Party officials say the order has not been consistently followed.
Jhagra, accompanied by several PTI leaders, was stopped at the Dahgali checkpoint en route to the jail and began a sit-in there before dispersing quietly after some time. “870 unique meetings supposedly, but today was the 60th Thursday in a row when no one was allowed to meet Imran Khan,” Jhagra wrote in a post on X, citing a statement by Mosharraf Zaidi, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. “When you learn to lie about numbers, lie shamelessly: Form 47 disease going viral from the ECP to government spokesmen!”
Speaking to reporters at the site, Jhagra said the fact is that since October 2024, @as many as 60 weeks have passed, but not a single meeting of Imran Khan with his political friends has been allowed.” “Party leaders come here every week, but they are not allowed to meet [Imran]. On the other hand, during the last 60 weeks, just one or two meetings of Imran Khan have been allowed with the family in which all family members were allowed to meet the former prime minister,” he added.
Jhagra described the visit as an effort to highlight what he called a “hybrid, fascist system” and to protest the water cannons used against party members the previous day. “There is no law prohibiting prisoners from meeting their families,” he said. “You (the authorities) break the law by not allowing a meeting and then make it difficult to protest this. Everyone sits in a plot over there, yet you close the main road.”
He criticised the government for filing terrorism charges against PTI members while accusing the party’s government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of failing to combat terrorism. “You call every PTI member a terrorist, misuse anti-terrorism law, people appear in anti-terrorism courts in politically-motivated cases, and you level allegations at us that we cannot combat terrorism,” Jhagra said. “Beware of the day when things would get out of the hands of the party and people would take control into their hands and come on the roads.”
“It is condemnable that Imran Khan’s sons are not being allowed to talk to their father and they are unaware of his health,” he said. “This attitude is creating embarrassment for Pakistan.”“If you say that Pakistan first, the country should be placed before the hybrid system,” he added.
Asked why the party had not called for larger protests, Jhagra said it was the PTI’s duty to protect workers’ lives and avoid placing them “in front of bullets.” “Moreover, they want [KP Chief Minister] Sohail Afridi to make a mistake and provide them an opportunity to take further action against the KP government,” he said. On the absence of the chief minister, Jhagra noted his “double responsibility” in running the province and working for Khan’s release, including weekly cabinet meetings.
Khan, who has been detained since August 2023, is serving a sentence in a corruption case involving £190 million and faces trials under the Anti-Terrorism Act linked to May 9, 2023, protests. The party has repeatedly expressed concerns about his health. But on Dec. 2, after a rare meeting, Khan’s sister Uzma Khanum told reporters that Imran Khan’s health is perfectly fine. “However, he was very angry and said that they are subjecting him to mental torture.” She said he was confined to his cell most of the day, allowed limited time outside, and had no communication with others. The meeting lasted about 30 minutes.
In a recent Sky News interview, Zaidi said Khan had 870 unique meetings over 860 days of incarceration. “This doesn’t sound like solitary confinement to me,” Zaidi said, noting 451 interviews with lawyers.
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