Ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan arbitrarily detained, says UN working group
Al Jazeera
Geneva-based UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says ‘appropriate remedy’ would be to release Khan ‘immediately’.
A United Nations human rights working group says former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been arbitrarily imprisoned in violation of international law.
In an opinion issued on Monday, the Geneva-based UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said the “appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Khan immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law”.
“[The] working group concludes that his detention had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office. Thus, from the outset, that prosecution was not grounded in law and was reportedly instrumentalised for a political purpose,” the UN group said, according to a report published on Pakistan’s Dawn news website.
Since his removal as prime minister in April 2022, Khan, 71, has been entangled in more than 200 legal cases and imprisoned since August last year. He calls the cases politically motivated and orchestrated by his political enemies to keep him from power.
Last week, an Islamabad court rejected a plea to suspend the jail terms of Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi, whose marriage was ruled illegal under Islamic law.
