The PTI has claimed that two of its leaders, Shireen Mazari and Yasmin Rashid, have been arrested by the police. An action that they described as “abduction”.
“50 police officers and plainclothes persons outside my house trying to break gate,” Imaan Mazari, daughter of Shireen, said in a tweet on Thursday. “They’ve entered with guns.”
In the past two days over half a dozen PTI leaders have been taken into custody by the police, following the arrest of Khan. But the former prime minister’s arrest was declared “unlawful” by the Supreme Court on Thursday. He is set to appear in Islamabad High Court Friday (today).
Later, Imaan retweeted a video in which Shireen was seen taken by the Islamabad police. She was with her mother. “Victory to democracy and state terrorism is unacceptable,” she said, “state terrorism will not prevail.”
“PTI’s Iron Lady Yasmin Rashid has been arrested! They think they can stop this movement by these arrests, they don’t know that Pakistan has changed forever, we are all Imran Khan now,” said the party.
“Dr Yasmin Rashid’s phone was illegally used after he was arrested. Messages have been sent to people not to go to Islamabad. Be careful with this stuff. All friends leave for Islamabad,” PTI leader Hammad Azhar tweeted.
“We had mass rallies by the opposition parties. We never stopped them. We never placed blockades and they all came to Islamabad,” she said in an interview with Channel 4 News on Thursday.
She was responding to a query whether the treatment currently her party was experiencing, with much of their leadership in jail was actually a mirror image of the treatment dished out by them to their opponents when they were in power.
“What is being meted out to us is not what we did to our political opponents.”
When asked about the perception that the PTI would seize the opportunity if there was any rapprochement with the military, she said that if that was PTI’s intent than Khan would not have led a protest where he has challenged the “wrongdoings of individuals of the military”.
Shireen was of the view that the former PM had countless opportunities where he could have compromised, but “he stood for principles”.
