Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan arrested at Islamabad court

Officials from the party of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan say he has been arrested as he appeared in a court in the capital, Islamabad, to face charges in multiple graft cases.

Fawad Chaudhry, a senior official with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party said the 70-year-old Khan was arrested on Tuesday on the premises of the court by agents from the country's anti-corruption body, the National Accountability Bureau.

Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April last year. He has claimed his ouster was illegal and a Western conspiracy and has campaigned against the government of his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, demanding early elections.

Chaudhry said Khan was dragged out of the court and into a police vehicle. He said the former premier is now in the custody of the security forces. He denounced the arrest as “an abduction.”

Pakistan’s independent GEO TV broadcast images of Khan being pulled by security forces towards an armored vehicle, which took him away.

Khan's party immediately complained to the Islamabad High Court, which requested a police report explaining the charges for Khan's arrest.

Officials from the anti-corruption body said that Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau had issued arrest warrants for Khan last week in a separate graft case, for which he had not obtained bail — something that would protect him from arrest under the country's laws.

'Unacceptable allegations'

Khan's arrest comes a day after the military warned him against making "baseless allegations" after he again accused a senior officer of plotting to kill him.

The rebuke late Monday underscored how far Khan's relations have deteriorated with the powerful military, which backed his rise to power in 2018 but withdrew its support ahead of a parliamentary vote of no confidence that ousted him last year.

Pakistan is deeply mired in an economic and political crisis, with Khan pressuring the struggling coalition government for early elections.

At a weekend rally in Lahore, Khan repeated claims that a senior intelligence officer Major-General Faisal Naseer was involved in an assassination attempt last year during which he was shot in the leg.

The military's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) wing said in a statement that "this fabricated and malicious allegation is extremely unfortunate, deplorable and unacceptable".

"This has been a consistent pattern for the last year wherein military and intelligence agencies officials are targeted with insinuations and sensational propaganda for the furtherance of political objectives," it said.

Criticism of the military establishment is rare in Pakistan, where army chiefs hold significant influence over domestic politics and foreign policy and have long been accused of interfering in the rise and fall of governments.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif - whom Khan also alleged was involved in the assassination plot - weighed in on Twitter.

"His levelling of allegations without any proof against General Faisal Naseer and officers of our Intelligence Agency cannot be allowed and will not be tolerated," he said.

Rejects findings

Pakistan's government has said the assassination attempt was the work of a lone gunman, who is now in custody and who confessed in a video controversially leaked to media.

Khan rejects those findings and insists authorities have refused to accept his attempts to file a so-called first information report (FIR) with police identifying the real culprits.

Khan repeated his allegations in a video statement released ahead of his court appearance Tuesday, saying that "there is no reason for me to fabricate the facts".

ISPR said it reserved the right to "take legal course of action against patently false statements and propaganda".

Khan faces dozens of charges that were brought against him since he was ousted -- a tactic analysts say successive Pakistan governments have used to silence their opponents.

Pakistan's military, the world's sixth largest, holds undue influence over the nation.

It staged at least three coups since the country gained independence in 1947 and ruled for more than three decades.