Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a former Pakistani interior minister allied with ex-Prime Minister Iman Khan, was arrested on Thursday, the day after another prominent opposition figure was released on bail.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who leads a party that was part of Iman Khan's government coalition, appeared before a judge in Islamabad before being remanded in custody for two days.
Incitement to revolt
He was arrested for remarks accusing former President Asif Ali Zardari of having hatched "
an assassination plot to eliminate Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party leader Imran Khan
", according to the statement. charge presented by the police.
Read alsoKennedy assassination: the conspiracy thesis is relaunched
"
He tried to incite the people
," said Raja Inayat ur Rehman, an official of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP, centre-left) who filed the complaint and of which Asif Ali Zardari is co-chairman.
This arrest took place a few hours after the release on bail, after a week of detention, of Fawad Chaudhry, who was Minister of Information under the government of Iman Khan.
Mr. Chaudhry was accused of having "
harassed and intimidated
" in television interviews the members of the Electoral Commission and their families, according to a police report made public by the PTI, the political party led by Iman Khan.
Ongoing political crisis
Pakistan has been in the grip of a serious political crisis since the ousting of Iman Khan by a motion of no confidence in April 2022. Iman Khan had then lost the support of several of his partners within his coalition.
The former cricket champion continues to enjoy solid popularity and is pushing for early elections before the deadline set for mid-October.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government is doing everything to ensure that the legislative elections do not take place sooner, in order to give itself a chance to recover the economy and its faltering popularity by then.
