Pakistani police launched a nation-wide crackdown overnight, arresting at least 1,500 supporters of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan ahead of an opposition rally planned later this week in Islamabad, officials said Monday.

The arrests followed intermittent clashes over the weekend between Khan's supporters and riot police in the capital that saw police using tear gas and batons to fight stone-throwing protesters.

The violence erupted again Monday when police fired tear gas at nearly 3,000 supporters on a main highway some 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Islamabad. Khan's party rules in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and its chief minister, Pervez Khattak, and some cabinet ministers led the protesters.

Story continues below advertisement

Police official Hussain Awan said the protesters pelted police with stones and bricks, burned several vehicles and chanted slogans against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had warned Sunday that the government would extend protocol to Khattak if he arrived in the capital formally but that he would be dealt with strictly if he led the protesters.

Amnesty International expressed concern over the situation demanding that Pakistani authorities release opposition activists and allow demonstrators to exercise their right to peaceful assembly.

"Pakistan's authorities must immediately and unconditionally release hundreds of opposition activists, lift restrictions on their movement," Amnesty said in a statement. "If sporadic incidents of violence occur, the authorities should identify the responsible people. Using the violent acts of a few as a pretext to restrict or impede the rights of a majority is in clear violation of Pakistan's obligations under international law."

On Monday, a Pakistani court barred Khan's followers from demonstrating on Islamabad streets, restricting the rally to within the limits of a city park, said government prosecutor Saddique Awan. Last week, the government imposed a two-month ban on street rallies in the capital.

Khan's attorney Babar Awan said the party would appeal. The party has called for massive street demonstrations for Wednesday, threatening to lock down Islamabad in a bid to force Sharif to resign.

Sharif has been under pressure after his family members were named as holders of offshore bank accounts in leaked financial documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Story continues below advertisement

Story continues below advertisement

Police have conducted raids based on tips and information about planned violence, said government spokesman Zaeem Qadri. Those who pledge not to take part in violent actions are released, while those considered a threat remain in custody pending charges, he said.

Two security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the number of those arrested overnight ranges between 1,500 and 1,800. Punjab provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah said 838 Khan supporters were arrested.

Police have already placed shipping containers on key highways leading to Islamabad to stop convoys of Khan supporters from reaching the capital.

The interior minister said Khan's followers had violent plans, which included the storming of government offices.</s>Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan on Tuesday called off anti-government protests he had planned for Wednesday and instead announced celebrations after the Supreme Court ordered a probe against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family over the Panama Papers scandal.

Mr. Khan had threatened to ‘lock down’ the capital on Wednesday by mobilising a million supporters to force Mr. Sharif to step down over corruption allegations against him and his family.

Mr. Khan said outside his Bani Gala residence here that it was time to “celebrate victory and offer thanks”.

“Go home and rest,” he told about 300 supporters who had been camping outside his residence.

‘Thanksgiving parade’

 

 He asked them to return to Islamabad tomorrow to celebrate thanksgiving at the Parade Ground in the capital.

“I am elated that the investigation... will begin day after tomorrow,” he said.

The Supreme Court has set November 3 as date of hearing in the case.

Three of Mr. Sharif’s four children are said to be owners of offshore companies, according to the Panama Papers.

Mr. Sharif and his family have dismissed the allegations of money laundering and denied any wrongdoing but the Opposition is demanding an independent probe.

The announcement to cancel the protests came just hours after party’s spokesman Naeem ul-Haq had said that the protest would go ahead as planned.

After Mr. Khan’s announcement that he would not enforce the ‘lockdown’ it is expected that the government would lift the roadblocks and clear entry points leading to Islamabad.</s>The government has already enforced a two-month ban on street rallies in the capital

Pakistani police launched a nation-wide crackdown overnight, arresting at least 1,500 supporters of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan ahead of an Opposition rally planned later this week in Islamabad, officials said on Monday.

The arrests followed intermittent clashes since the weekend between Mr. Khan’s supporters and riot police in the capital that saw police using tear gas and batons to fight stone-throwing activists. Violence erupted again on Sunday near Mr. Khan’s suburban home and at several places on Islamabad’s outskirts.

On Monday, a Pakistani court barred Khan’s followers from demonstrating on Islamabad streets, restricting the rally to within the limits of a city park, said government prosecutor Saddique Awan. As of last week, the government has already enforced a two-month ban on street rallies in the capital.

Mr. Khan’s attorney Babar Awan said the party would appeal. The party has called for massive street demonstrations on Wednesday, threatening to lock down Islamabad in a bid to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign.

Mr. Sharif has been under pressure after his family members were named as holders of offshore bank accounts in leaked financial documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.</s>Pakistani police launched a nation-wide crackdown overnight, arresting at least 1,500 supporters of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan ahead of an opposition rally planned later this week in Islamabad, officials said Monday.

The arrests followed intermittent clashes over the weekend between Khan’s supporters and riot police in the capital that saw police using tear gas and batons to fight stone-throwing activists.

The violence erupted again Monday when police fired tear gas on nearly 3,000 supporters on a main highway some 80 kilometre northwest of Islamabad. Khan’s party rules in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and its chief minister, Pervez Khattak, and some cabinet ministers led the protesters.

Police official Hussain Awan said the protesters pelted police with stones and bricks and chanted slogans against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had warned Sunday that the government would extend protocol to Khattak if he arrived in the capital formally but that he would be dealt with strictly if he led the protesters.

On Monday, a Pakistani court barred Khan’s followers from demonstrating on Islamabad streets, restricting the rally to within the limits of a city park, said government prosecutor Saddique Awan. As of last week, the government has already enforced a two-month ban on street rallies in the capital.

Khan’s attorney Babar Awan said the party would appeal. The party has called for massive street demonstrations for Wednesday, threatening to lock down Islamabad in a bid to force Sharif to resign.

Sharif has been under pressure after his family members were named as holders of offshore bank accounts in leaked financial documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Police have conducted raids based on tips and information about planned violence, said government spokesman Zaeem Qadri. Those who pledge not to take part in violent actions are released, while those considered a threat remain in custody pending charges, he said.

Two security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the number of those arrested overnight ranges between 1,500 and 1,800. Punjab provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah said 838 supporters were arrested.

Police have placed shipping containers on key highways leading to Islamabad to stop Khan’s party’s convoys from across Pakistan from reaching the capital.

The interior minister said Khan’s followers had violent plans, which included the storming of government offices.

Khan’s close aide Shah Mahmood Qureshi alleged that the police were manhandling and roughing up the family members of the workers. “The police are also trespassing on the houses of our leaders and activists,” he said. He said two senior leaders of the party were forcibly bundled in a police van. Both were later released on orders from the interior minister.</s>Pakistan's largest opposition party said on Tuesday that two of its supporters have died from police use of tear gas to prevent hundreds of supporters from entering the capital, Islamabad, for a planned protest demanding the prime minister step down.

"Two of our workers have been killed due to excessive use of expired tear-gas shells," said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, a senior leader of opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said on local Geo TV.

Local authorities could not immediately be reached to confirm any deaths.

Hundreds of supporters of the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan clashed with police overnight trying to enter the capital for a planned citywide shutdown on Wednesday.</s>Imran Khan says mass protest no danger to Pakistan democracy

Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan on Sunday dismissed accusations his planned shutdown of the nation’s capital could lead to a military coup, saying Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “can’t hide behind ‘democracy in danger'” to quash protests.

Khan, a former national cricket hero, has vowed to bring a million people into Islamabad on Wednesday to paralyse the government and force Sharif either to resign or allow an inquiry into the “Panama Papers” revelations about his family’s offshore wealth.

Sharif’s ruling PML-N party has accused Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of endangering democracy by attempting to draw Pakistan’s powerful military into a political dispute – a sensitive issue in a nation where the army has a history of staging coups.

Reuters interviewed Khan at his plush home in the hills above Islamabad, where he says the police have him under virtual house arrest after the city banned public gatherings ahead of Wednesday’s planned protest and arrested scores of PTI workers.

He dismissed claims he wants the army to topple Sharif, as it did when Sharif was in power in the 1990s, and said the protests aim to hold the prime minister to account for alleged corruption.

“How can a democrat want the military to come in?,” Khan said. “He has to answer. He can’t hide behind ‘democracy in danger’.”

Pakistan’s military has repeatedly refused to comment on Wednesday’s planned protests.

Relations between the PML-N party and the military soured earlier this month after a newspaper report about a top-level national security meeting angered the army, prompting the removal of one of Sharif’s cabinet ministers blamed for the leak.

The tense relations, as well as the rowing between Sharif and Khan, have stirred unease and prompted newspaper editorial warnings that a descent into street chaos could trigger military intervention.

On Sunday, one of Sharif’s closest allies, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, wrote in the English-language The News newspaper that Khan was “willing to derail democracy for personal gains”.

The attack adds to long-held suspicions by PML-N supporters that Khan is being used by the military in a power struggle with the civilian government, which has ceded control of key policy areas such as relations with India and Afghanistan to the military.

“I don’t need the army,” Khan said. “I’m doing what the opposition is supposed to do. Expose corruption, expose breaking the laws of the land … It doesn’t mean I’m asking the army to come in.”

Khan said it is corruption, not protests, that threatens democracy.

“When you have people coming to power and looting the country, they actually weaken the democratic system because people lose faith in democracy, and when the army comes in they welcome them with sweets.”

Khan blamed Sharif for the latest tensions between the government and the military, saying Sharif’s allies leaked details of the security meeting to the Dawn newspaper.

“They messed it up,” said Khan. “They have humiliated the army, they’ve exposed the army, they’ve ridiculed the army because of the (Dawn leak) – what have we got to do with it?”

The Oct. 6 Dawn article said top PML-N politicians confronted high-ranking military officials and called for the military not to interfere if civilian authorities tried to arrest members of anti-India militant groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

On Friday, Khan’s supporters fought running battles with police in the city of Rawalpindi, close to Islamabad. Scores of PTI party workers have been arrested.

Khan has accused the police of brutality, and urged his supporters to lay low until Wednesday to avoid arrest.

Khan’s latest challenge to Sharif’s government is based on leaked documents from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm that appear to show the prime minister’s daughter and two sons owned offshore holding companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and used them to buy properties in London.

Holding offshore companies is not illegal in Pakistan, but Khan insists the Sharif family money was gained by corruption. Khan, 64, said in May he used an offshore company himself to legally avoid paying British tax on a London property sale.

The ruling party has said it would take part in an investigation, but has rejected the opposition’s formula focused on Sharif’s family rather than making it broad based. Sharif’s own name did not appear in the Panama Papers.

In 2014, Khan led a months-long occupation that paralysed Islamabad’s government quarter after rejecting Sharif’s decisive election win a year earlier.

The prospect of similar protests has hit the local stock market, stoking fears of political instability just as the sputtering economy was starting to rebound.

Khan said that unless Sharif agreed to his demands over the Panama Papers investigation, there was little the government could do to make him call off Wednesday’s protests.

However, he sought to downplay his party’s calls to “lock down” the city roads and paralyse the capital, something that prompted the authorities to ban all public gatherings.

Khan said his previous rallying cries for supporters to stop the government functioning were not a direct threat, but rather a prediction.

“When you see a million people in Islamabad, trust me, the city will shut down,” said Khan.</s>The ruling was applauded by PTI leader Imran Khan, who will instead hold a rally to thank the SC for its decision.

Pakistan's Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing a case into the Panama papers leaks and offered to form a commission to investigate revelations that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's children had offshore accounts.

Following this, Pakistan's Opposition called off a planned "lockdown" of the capital.

Mr. Sharif has been under growing pressure from Opposition parties, mainly Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which had vowed that one million supporters would shut down Islamabad on Wednesday as part of long-running efforts to force the government out of power.

Police have repeatedly clashed with protesters in recent days, detaining more than 1,000 PTI supporters from across the country since last week after imposing a ban on all public gatherings in Islamabad, which was later partly lifted by a court order.

"We are determined to resolve this issue. We will solve it and we will solve it as soon as possible. Now the highest forum in the country in regards to dispute resolution has taken up this matter, so now you hold your positions, please restrain," Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, one of the five judges hearing the case, told the court.

The ruling was applauded by Mr. Khan, who held a press conference at his home on the outskirts of Islamabad to declare victory.

"I am so happy that the Supreme Court has decided that from Thursday it will begin probing Nawaz Sharif," he said, surrounded by ecstatic supporters.

He added that his supporters would instead hold a rally thanking the Supreme Court for its decision.

The move brought an anti-climactic end to what observers believed could have become a protracted confrontation, similar to a four-month sit-in led by Mr. Khan in 2014.

Although Mr. Khan had repeatedly vowed to bring a million protesters to the capital, disruption was thus far limited to a few areas around the city and the Peshawar-Islamabad highway, where some 5,000 PTI supporters were blocked from entering the capital.

The planned protest also came at a sensitive time for Mr. Sharif, whose relationship with the all-powerful army is at a low following the publication of a media report, which said civilian officials had warned the military to stop backing jihadist fighters abroad.

The military has used the pretext of civil unrest to sweep in and replace elected governments three times in the country's history, and analysts had warned that Mr. Sharif may need to strike a deal with the Army to ensure his survival.</s>In a jolt to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a probe into the Panama Papers scandal involving corruption allegations against the family of the beleaguered premier.



 The Supreme Court heard several identical petitions by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan and others to investigate charges of corruption against Sharif and his relatives after the Panama Papers released earlier this year showed his family owning offshore companies and assets.



 The larger five-member bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and comprising Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, Justice Amir Hani Muslim, Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed and Justice Ijazul Ahsan conducted the hearing in presence of several cabinet ministers, lawyers of petitioners, senior PTI leaders and media.



 The apex court said it was ready to appoint a probe commission headed by a judge and armed with powers of the Supreme Court. The court also ordered the government and petitioners to present their Terms of Reference (ToR) for the probe panel.



 It court will decide to harmonise the ToR if the parties could not come up with the agreed set of ToR. Before its adjournment till Thursday, the court also expressed willingness to hold hearings on a daily basis.



 However, the court did not ban the protest by PTI tomorrow in Islamabad. But it advised the government and opposition to show restraint. Reacting to the court's ruling, PTI chief Khan said the planned anti-government rally will now be marked as a day of thanksgiving in Islamabad.



 Addressing a press conference outside Bani Gala, Khan thanked those who were part of his struggle against corruption. "Go home and rest," Khan told supporters, "You have to return to Islamabad tomorrow to celebrate thanksgiving at Parade Ground."



 "I am elated that the investigation into Nawaz Sharif's (alleged corruption) will begin day after tomorrow." PTI had announced the rally in Islamabad to force Sharif to resign for a fair probe into the scandal. According to the Panama Papers, three of Sharif's four children - Maryam, Hasan and Hussain were owners of offshore companies and "were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies."



 Sharif and his family have dismissed the allegations of money laundering and denied any wrongdoing but the opposition is demanding an independent probe.</s>Khan had threatened to "shut down" the capital Islamabad on Wednesday as part of his push to unseat Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on grounds of alleged corruption linked to the "Panama Papers" leak.

But on Sunday, he backtracked, saying his rallying cry to stop the government from functioning was not a direct threat, but rather a prediction of what would happen if his supporters flooded into the city.

The Islamabad High Court on Monday dismissed government challenges to Wednesday's protests, but ordered that Khan hold the demonstration on a parade ground far from the city's main government and commercial districts, Geo Television reported.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui also ordered the government to ensure protection for the fundamental rights of residents of the capital to go about their daily lives, Geo reported.

Last week, the government enforced administrative orders outlawing gatherings of more than five people in the capital and neighboring city of Rawalpindi. Since then, dozens of activists belonging to Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have been arrested, the party says.

Khan, a former national cricketing hero, has vowed not to back down unless Sharif either resigns, or submits himself for investigation regarding the 'Panama Papers' leaks.

Documents from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm in April appear to show that Sharif's daughter and two sons owned offshore holding companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. Sharif's family denies wrongdoing.

Holding offshore companies is not illegal in Pakistan, but Khan has implied the money was gained by corruption. Khan admitted in May that he used an offshore company himself to legally avoid paying British tax on a London property sale.

Pakistan's Supreme Court is set to take up a case regarding the allegations on Tuesday.</s>Pakistan opposition leader Imran Khan backed down from his threat to shut down the capital on Wednesday, vowing instead to hold a celebratory rally about a Supreme Court decision to pursue a case linked to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

"On the Supreme Court's advice, we have decided that tomorrow we will thank God and celebrate a Day of Thanks at (Islamabad's) parade ground," Khan told media on Tuesday, speaking outside his home in Islamabad.

The celebratory rally is a step back from his threat to paralyze the city and the government, and is likely to ease tension that has boiled over into violence in the days ahead of the planned protest in the capital.
Over 1,500 supporters of opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf are arrested ahead of a planned protest in the capital Islamabad against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.