ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Pakistani court on Thursday indicted imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan and dozens of his associates on charges of inciting people to attack military and government installations last year, officials and his party said.
Khan pleaded not guilty when charges were read out to him in court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, according to officials and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI. Khan and the others will go on trial under anti-terrorism laws that carry punishments up to life in prison.
PTI said that top party official Omar Ayub Khan, the current opposition leader in Parliament, also was arrested by police on Thursday. He was wanted on separate charges that included incitement of violence in the capital last week.
The indictments against Khan and the dozens of his party members stem from widespread violence on May 9, 2023 that was sparked by Khan’s arrest at the time on corruption charges.
Thousands of demonstrators attacked the military’s headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, stormed an air base in Mianwali in the eastern Punjab province and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest.
Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022 but has remained the leading opposition figure, and has since then been embroiled in more than 150 criminal cases that his party says are politically motivated.
Authorities say that during the May 9, 2023 riots, demonstrators targeted military installations because Khan had repeatedly blamed his removal on the United States and Pakistan’s military, which has ruled the country for half of its history since its independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
The U.S. government, the Pakistani military and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who replaced Khan after his ouster in 2022, have denied the allegations.
A post on Khan’s X account on Thursday night announced a rally Dec. 13 in the northwestern city of Peshawar to pay tribute to a dozen PTI supporters that the party says were killed by security forces during last week’s march on Islamabad.
The government says six people were killed in the violence, but that none of them were PTI supporters.
Khan said on X that a five-member committee of senior PTI party leaders would be formed to demand talks with military leaders over the release of what he called political prisoners. Khan also called for a judicial commission on the violence of May 9, 2023 and of Nov. 26 of this year in Islamabad.
Khan said on X that if those two demands are not met, his party would launch civil disobedience on Dec. 14 that would start with asking Pakistanis abroad to reduce the amount of money sent back to Pakistan in remittances. That would be followed by unspecified further measures, he said.
Last week, thousands of Khan’s supporters defied a police lockdown to enter the capital, Islamabad, where they clashed with police officers who used tear gas and batons to disperse them.
Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, who was leading the protest to demand her husband’s release fled the scene on Nov. 26 after officers launched their operation and has not been publicly seen since then. Police say she is hiding in the northwestern city of Peshawar, the capital of restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Khan’s party is in power.
Police say they are seeking the arrest of Bibi, who was recently freed on bail in a graft case.
Meanwhile, security forces in a pair of raids killed eight militants in the country’s restive northwest on Thursday, the military said in a statement. It said the operations were conducted in South Waziristan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan.
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