Former Pakistani prime minister turned over to accountability watchdog to look into land bribery case
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Hashim Sheikh
- . May 11, 2023
- . Update: May 11, 2023 5:47 pm
In a case where he and his wife are accused of accepting land worth millions of dollars as a bribe from a real estate tycoon through a charitable trust, the former prime minister Imran Khan was on physical remand for eight days by an accountability court on Wednesday.
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In the Al-Qadir Trust case, Khan was brought before Judge Mohammed Bashir at Islamabad Police Lines, which was accorded the status of a court late on Tuesday night.
Bashir instructed authorities to bring Khan in court on May 17 and ordered an eight-day detention in the National Accountability Bureau’s care.
After the decision, Sher Afzal Khan Marwat, the former prime minister’s attorney, said to Arab News: “Khan has given me a message for the Pakistani public and he requested me to tell you in the same lines. We informed him that the public had taken to the streets to protest his detention.
“He (Khan) said: ‘Tell the nation that you have to stand strongly for the rule of law if martial law is imposed by (army chief) Asim Munir.'”
Khan and his third wife are the owners of the Al-Qadir Trust, which manages a university outside of Islamabad that focuses on spirituality and Islamic teachings. Bushra Bibi, Khan’s wife and a well-known spiritual healer, served as the project’s inspiration.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that the trust had been set up so that Khan could obtain valuable land as a bribe from one of Pakistan’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen. According to the minister, the trust owns a sizable plot of land in Islamabad adjacent to Khan’s hilltop mansion that is valued around 60 acres and 7 billion Pakistani rupees ($24.7 million).
The university’s formal campus is a 60-acre tract, although not much has been constructed there.
Aides Fawad Chaudhry claimed on Tuesday that the allegations of land bribery were false.
The former prime minister was charged in a second case concerning the sale of official goods, known as the Toshakhana reference, just hours after Khan was remanded in police prison in the Al-Qadir Trust case, according to his counsel.
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“We have boycotted the court proceedings, and Khan has also not signed the documents,” he informed the journalists.
Indignant fans of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, possibly the most well-liked in the nation, staged demonstrations throughout the nation after his detention on Tuesday when he was on the grounds of the Islamabad High Court.
