Pakistani police have filed terrorism charges against former Prime Minister Imran Khan, escalating political tensions in the country as he holds mass rallies seeking to return to office.
The terrorism charges come over a speech Khan gave in Islamabad on Saturday in which he vowed to sue police officers and a female judge and alleged that a close aide had been tortured after his arrest.
Under Pakistan’s legal system, police file what it known as a first information report about the charges against an accused to a magistrate judge, who allows the investigation to move forward. Typically, police then arrest and question the accused.The report against Khan includes testimony from Magistrate Judge Ali Javed, who described being at the Islamabad rally and hearing Khan criticize the inspector-general of Pakistan’s police and another judge.
The Pakistani judiciary also has a history of politicization and taking sides in power struggles between the military, the civilian government and opposition politicians, according to the Washington-based advocacy group Freedom House. In seeking Khan’s ouster earlier this year, the opposition had accused him of economic mismanagement as inflation soars and the Pakistani rupee plummets in value. The parliament’s no-confidence vote in April capped months of political turmoil and a constitutional crisis that required the Supreme Court to step in. Meanwhile, it appeared the military similarly had cooled to Khan.Khan alleged without providing evidence that the Pakistani military took part in a U.S. plot to oust him.
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