LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has claimed that a plan was hatched to assassinate him inside the Federal Judicial Complex (FJC) in Islamabad where ‘unknown people’ were waiting for him; these ‘unknowns’ were the same people who were involved in the previous assassination attempt on him at Wazirabad.
While addressing a press conference through a video link here on Monday, the former PM said that if he went inside the Judicial Complex (to appear before a trial court in the Toshakhana case last Saturday), these people would have killed him, but his companions had signalled him to leave the place.
He claimed that there were plainclothes who had no reason to be inside the Judicial Complex as they were not lawyers or officials. “It was a trap and their presence there only meant to assassinate me; on this occasion, our lawyers were also subjected to torture inside the Judicial Complex,” he claimed, adding that the manner in which police resorted to teargas shelling and throwing stones at his convoy, he feared that the ‘unknown’ people would have killed him.
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Khan urged Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Atta Bandial to investigate these ‘unknown’ people. He also pleaded the Chief Justice to hold hearings of all the cases against him through video link, saying there was a threat to his life and he was deliberately being lured to the courts to expose him in the open and subsequently, kill him.
He asked the CJP if there was any surety for his security; “tell me who was there to protect me when I entered the Judicial Complex as the three to four guards protecting me would have easily been pushed away”. He also urged him to take notice of what was happening in the country as democracy and the Constitution were being attacked while nobody was caring about the Constitution.
Continuing on the Judicial Complex incident, Khan said that they were collecting evidence and the proof would be sent to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the European Union. He also urged overseas Pakistanis to apprise the international community of how the human rights of his party workers were being violated by the incumbent government.
The PTI chief took a dig at the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), saying the opponents would not win elections at any cost, adding that seeing election results, their aim was to kill him. He also accused them of creating polarisation in society by calling his party workers terrorists, saying such allegations will spread hatred and divide the nation.
He further accused the coalition rulers of making efforts to create a rift between the PTI and armed forces; they were trying their best to provoke the military against the PTI by highlighting campaigns on social media, but no one could control public reaction on social media. He added that “this country was mine and the armed forces were also mine”.
Referring to alleged difficulties in running election campaigns in Punjab, he accused the government of spoiling peace in the province and creating hurdles to delay the elections despite its date drawing near. “The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had already announced the schedule for polls in the province which were to be held on April 30,” he said, adding that the authorities were reluctant to allow them to hold a public gathering at Minar-e-Pakistan.
Turning his guns towards Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senior Vice President Maryam Nawaz, Khan said: the ‘queen of liars’ thinks as if Pakistan was her fiefdom. “She says that her father was Nelson Mandela and he should be forgiven,” he added.
The former premier castigated caretaker Punjab Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi, saying they came to power just to ruin the PTI, and questioned how he became a millionaire in a short period.
He also castigated Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for saying that the country’s missile programme could not be harmed. “I think the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was now talking about our nuclear programme.
I had warned earlier that if our economy continues to deteriorate, it would compromise our national security and sovereignty since they all were interlinked. Hence, conduct free and transparent elections and the economy would revive automatically,” he added. He urged his supporters not to take up arms as the party did not want anarchy but elections in the country.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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