Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan welcomes probe into shooting
- Government has offered to launch a judicial commission to investigate the attack in which Khan was shot in the leg during a protest march
- Khan says supporters’ long march towards the capital calling for early elections will restart on Tuesday, to join via video link while he recovers from his injuries
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Sunday he welcomed the government’s offer to launch a judicial commission to investigate the attack in which he was shot in the leg on Thursday.
Khan made the remarks in a video broadcast live on social media from a hospital in the eastern city of Lahore, where he was receiving treatment after being shot during a protest march three days earlier in what he and supporters called an assassination attempt.
The government has said it will investigate the shooting. On Sunday afternoon following Khan’s remarks, a spokesman for the provincial government said he had been discharged from hospital and left for his home in Lahore.
Khan said his supporters’ long march towards the capital calling for early elections, which was disrupted by the attack, would restart on Tuesday but that he would not join in person while he recovered from his injuries.
Former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi would lead the rally in coming weeks in the eastern province of Punjab, Khan said.
The former prime minister, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April, said he would join the rally in 10 to 14 days’ time when it reached the city of Rawalpindi, a short drive from the capital Islamabad.
In the meantime, he would address the march by video link each day, he said.
The rally began late last month in Lahore but was cut short six days later when Khan was shot in the leg as he waved to crowds from a container mounted on a truck leading the protest.
One man is in custody following the attack, which government officials have said was the work of a lone gunman and “a very clear case of religious extremism”.
In an apparent confession video leaked by police to media, the sole suspect said he tried to kill Khan because his convoy was interrupting the call to prayer, which summons Muslims to mosques.
Khan, however, insists two shooters were involved, and has accused three people of devising a plan to assassinate him, naming Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and intelligence official Major-General Faisal Nasser.
He did not provide evidence for his claim, which was strongly denied by the government and military.
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Former Pakistan prime minister wounded in ‘assassination attempt’
Sharif on Saturday said Khan was making “baseless allegations” but that the government had requested the country’s chief justice to form a judicial commission to investigate the claims.
Sharif also offered to resign if there was any evidence implicating him or his interior minister in the shooting. In a press conference in Lahore on Saturday, he said he would lose the right to continue as the nation’s prime minister if any evidence against him was uncovered.
“I request the Chief Justice of Pakistan to constitute a full court commission for the best interest of the nation, sake of justice, and to end this mess,” Sharif said. “If the Supreme Court remains quiet after this, then it will be a great damage to this country.”
Analysts say the assassination attempt and Khan’s accusations have pushed Pakistan into a “dangerous phase”.
“It is a perilous situation,” said academic and political analyst Tauseef Ahmed Khan, who is also a board member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
“Not only for the democratic process but also for the country.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse
