Former Pakistan PM and cricketer Imran Khan freed after arrest ruled invalid

Mr Khan was dramatically arrested on Tuesday in Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad on corruption charges. Footage showed paramilitary forces seizing Mr Khan as he was in court for another matter.

Mr Khan served as prime minister between 2018 and 2022. He initially had the backing of the country’s powerful military but he is now one of its most vocal critics.

His arrest followed months of political crisis and came hours after the powerful military rebuked the former international cricketer for alleging that a senior officer had been involved in a plot to kill him.

Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has claimed his arrest is part of a plot to prevent him from running for high office again.

Since his arrest more than 2000 protesters have been arrested and 10 people have died in clashes.

Mr Khan appeared at the Supreme Court on Thursday after his lawyers challenged the legality of his earlier arrest.

Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial ordered his immediate release.

“Your arrest was invalid so the whole process needs to be backtracked,” he told Mr Khan, reported the BBC.

Mr Khan has said he was being “treated like a terrorist”.

On Wednesday he went before a specially convened court which remanded him in custody for eight days following a request by Pakistan’s top anti-corruption agency, the National Accountability Bureau, one of his lawyers told AFP.

The agency earlier said Mr Khan had ignored repeated court summons over alleged corruption linked to a trust fund he set up with his wife, a spiritual healer.

Mr Khan was also indicted without being arrested over separate accusations he mislead officials about gifts he received from foreign leaders while in power, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all parties in the crisis to refrain from violence.

‘Severe reaction’

The former cricket superstar, who remains wildly popular, was ousted in April 2022 in a no-confidence vote in parliament after he lost the support of Pakistan’s military.

Mr Khan has said the dozens of legal cases brought against him following his ousting are part of an effort by the government and the army to prevent him from returning to power ahead of elections due later this year.

The military earlier issued a strongly worded statement saying it was exercising “extreme restraint”.

It warned of a “severe reaction” to any further attacks on state and military facilities, and said responsibility will lie with “a group that wants to push Pakistan into civil war”.

Mr Khan’s party dismissed the statement as “contrary to facts and the situation on the ground”.

The interior ministry has ordered mobile internet services cut and restricted access to social media sites Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Pakistan’s communications agency said.

Pakistan is struggling through a severe economic downturn, brought about in part by the deepening political instability of the past year, with the currency the rupee plummeting to a record low against the dollar on Thursday.

Mr Khan’s arrest came hours after the military rebuked him for alleging that a senior officer was involved in a plot to assassinate him. The army has denied the accusation.

Criticism of Pakistan’s military establishment is considered a red line. Pakistani politicians have frequently been arrested and jailed since the country’s founding in 1947.

But few have so directly challenged a military which holds significant influence over domestic politics and foreign policy and that has staged at least three coups and ruled for more than three decades.