Pakistan government to arrest Imran Khan

Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif government will likely arrest cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan before November 2, when Imran plans to shut down Islamabad with an anti-Sharif protest, unnamed sources told Pakistani newspaper The News International.

‘Sources disclosed that it was likely that several key leaders of the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf) as well as party chairman Imran Khan would be placed under house arrest, in order to thwart their efforts to mobilize a huge crowd against the government,’ the newspaper wrote.

The former Pakistan cricket captain and his party are protesting Sharif’s ‘lack of accountability’ after the Panama Papers leak implicated him. PTI plans an `Islamabad lockdown’, to block the city and stop the government from functioning.

Representatives of Sharif’s party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), said recently that ‘no one would be allowed to block Islamabad and any such move would be resisted by the government,’The News wrote.

A panicked Chinese ambassador to Pakistan asked for a meeting with Imran and met him on Tuesday, to be assured that Chinese investments in Pakistan - especially the $51 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - aren’t a target of PTI’s November 2 ‘Occupy Islamabad’ anti-Sharif protest.

‘The gist of the meeting, according to PTI sources, was to dispel the impression that the party’s ongoing accountability movement against the prime minister was somehow meant to sabotage the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),’reported another Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, today.

It added that the PTI leadership ‘waxed lyrical’ about China’s ongoing support for Pakistan ‘at all regional and international forums. That latest support came in the form of China blocking India’s attempt to name the Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad in the Goa Brics declaration on Sunday.

Source: Times of India