next more than 50 supporters of the former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan have been detained around the country for protesting against his three-year prison sentence arrests were made in cities including bashawar Lahore.Karachi but the demonstrations were more muted and the massive unrest that broke out after Khan's previous detention back in May.
Mr Khan was found guilty of not declaring money earned from selling gifts he received while in office this verdict means he's not allowed to hold public office for five years with Pakistan just months away from a general election.
let's go live now to our Pakistan correspondent Caroline Davis who's live for us in Islamabad Caroline great to see you there's so much to go through
here let's start with the uh rests what is the scale of unrest across the country especially compared to last time Lewis this is nothing like the 9th of May when Imran Khan was arrested last time earlier this year and of course things have changed dramatically in Pakistan since then before Mr Khan he was arrested that arrest was then declared illegal just to run you through events back in May and when he was released however we saw a dramatic
Crackdown on his party thousands of his membership were arrested alleged to be involved in the protest that some of which did term violent During the period of time that he was in police custody back then we also saw as many of his senior leadership leave the party all together many of them were then arrested and then came out and gave a press conference some saying they were leaving
politics all together after many many years in it and since then Imran Khan has been in Zaman Park his home in Lahore but the number of supporters outside his that building has also dramatically decreased when I went firstly back in January when I first arrived back in Pakistan we saw that there were generally tens of supporters
outside his home him by the time we went after the 9th of May that had significantly dwindled either because people might felt that they didn't feel safe to be out there perhaps people had been arrested or from the government's point of view they decided no longer to support Imran Khan after what had
happened on the 9th of May that was their stance on it and so things have changed significantly for Imran Khan we of course saw yesterday that after he had been arrested his team put out a pre-recorded video of him calling for people to protest peacefully not to sit quietly at home but over the course ofthe last nearly 24 hours since he wasarrested we have not seen those Mass
protests our team that were outside his home in Lahore so that they did see and they filmed people there that hadstarted to gather with flags chanting aswell but they then saw them being led
Away by the police the exact number of people that have been arrested we stilldon't have those details we're hoping to get them later on today we are speaking to officials to see how many people did come out but at the moment this is a very different picture a very different scene from that that we saw in May okay and what happens next
a big question so at the moment we know that he's obviously spent the night in police custody we believe because his political party has said that he's in a place called attic jail which is about an hour and a half or so from where I am in Islamabad his team have said that they are planning to appeal the decision
that was made by the judge yesterday but at the moment we haven't heard anythingfurther about whether any of those appeals have been accepted by the courts
at this stage uh whether we will see Imran Khan appear in front of anybody so at the moment we are waiting to see but what we do know is that the party his PTI party have said that they have no planned protests for today so we are still waiting to see what Imran Khan and his party will now do of course wehaven't seen Imran Khan since we'veheard that he was arrested yesterday
morning we haven't seen any sort of public images of him he hasn't back here appeared back in public so at the moment
we're waiting to see what will happen will his legal team be able to find any form of relief or will Imran Khan remain in police custody okay Caroline thanks for that.
0 Comments