Pakistan police arrests jailed ex-PM Imran Khan's aides

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan police arrested two aides of former prime minister Imran Khan on Monday in a raid on his party's secretariat, despite the jailed ex-leader having won a series of legal cases brought against him since he was ousted from power in 2022.

A police contingent cordoned off the secretariat in Islamabad and detained the party's acting chairman Gohar Khan and its secretary information Rauf Hasan, a party spokesman Zulfikar Bukhari told Reuters in a Whatsapp message.

His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party later said the acting chairman had been released shortly after being detained.

However, Pakistan's ministry of interior identified the detained aides as Hasan and Ahmad Waqas Janjua, the party's coordinator for international media coverage. The ministry did not mention Gohar Khan in its statement.

The ministry said the two detained men were being investigated but did not say whether they had been charged.

PTI had said over the weekend that Janjua was picked up by police from his house in Islamabad.

The ministry also said the secretariat's digital media wing had been raided by the police and the country's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

"PTI is involved in anti-state propaganda," the ministry's statement said.

The party denies the accusation.

Former prime minister Khan has been in jail for about one year, even though all four convictions handed down to him ahead of a parliamentary election in February have either been suspended or overturned.

After being acquitted on the last of those four convictions, authorities rearrested Khan and his wife in an old corruption case on charges of selling state gifts unlawfully. He also faces an accusation of inciting his supporters to attack military installations last year.

Khan denies all the accusations against him.

His party secured the largest number of seats in parliament in the February election despite what Khan's party says is a military-backed crackdown that aims to keep him out of power.

It also won nearly two dozen extra parliament seats in a court ruling last week.

Khan blames his 2022 ouster in a no-confidence vote on Pakistan's powerful army generals after he fell out with them, a charge the army denies.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad and Ariba Shahid; Writing by Shivam Patel; Editing by YP Rajesh and Gareth Jones)