ALBAWABA - Demanding his release, thousands of supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan stormed the streets, commemorating the first anniversary of his arrest.
Officials said that these protests are part of the Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI opposition party’s campaign to pressure the government, under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, to free Khan without further delays.
In one of the biggest protests storming the Pakistani streets since Imran Khan's ousting in 2022, Swabi, a city in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where the PTI party rules.
More than 10,000 people were seen in Swabi carrying party flags and screaming chants in support of Khan. In their remarks, top party officials promised the protestors that Khan would soon join them, but they did not go into detail.
The province's chief minister, Ali Amin Gundapur, has advised marchers to prepare for a march on Islamabad in the coming weeks, as the PTI prepares a large rally in the capital later this month or early next month. He stated that if the PTI is denied the right to organize the protest in the nation's capital, it will resist.
Khan is now awaiting bail in numerous trials after his convictions in two key cases were overturned and his sentence suspended in the third.
Khan has proposed conditional negotiations with Pakistan's powerful military to resolve the political crisis that has gripped the South Asian country since his osuting.
His three criteria are the repayment of his party's "stolen mandate," the release of all arrested party officials, and the conduct of transparent elections.
