Pakistan’s former Member of the National Assembly and Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) leader Ali Wazir’s detention was extended by 15 days on Sunday. He was forcefully arrested by the police last month after an alleged road accident and currently faces terrorism charges.
The local administration of Pakistan’s Rawalpindi district on Sunday ordered the extension of MNA and PTM’s top leader, Ali Wazir. According to the authorities, the order extended Wazir’s imprisonment by 15 days; he will now be released on October 4, Geo News reported.
The current order issued against Wazir grants power to the administration to arrest and detain the suspected person. Currently, he is being imprisoned in the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.
Earlier, the district administration had issued orders to keep Wazir under custody from September 4 to 19, claimed by Geo News.
Wazir was earlier detained by the police from outside the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad. The leader at that time had brought an individual to the PIMS hospital after suffering a minor accident with Wazir’s car. Wazir’s arrest at that time was an ongoing, severe crackdown on PTM members after the death of senior leader and activist Gilaman Wazir.
Videos of Wazir were floating on social media last month, claiming that the accident was a mere sham to detain the leader. In a post on X, PTM said, “Ali Wazir, the strong voice of human rights and Pashtuns, is kidnapped and arrested in Islamabad without any reason. While the killers of Pashtuns have been protected by Islamabad, the clear proof of which is the free movement of the killers of Gilaman Pashtun.”
Similarly, in a viral video that surfaced on social media platforms recently, Wazir, while being arrested by the police, can be witnessed mentioning, “Now they are forcibly arresting me without any reason. Yes, there was a small accident and I had brought this kid to the hospital and now he is fine. But even then they arrest me, which is not right.”
At the end of the video, a policeman can be seen allegedly snatching the phone of Wazir’s companion.
The US chapter of PTM had also condemned the matter via a post on X stating, “The forceful pickup of Ali Wazir from PIMS Hospital by Islamabad Secretariat Police, under orders from their superiors, is a vile and unconscionable act. The police even stopped the video recording where he was explaining the reason for his arrest and snatched the phone from his friend.”
Wazir, who heads the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), has become the icon of the non-violent movement in Pakistan. However, Wazir spends most of his time fighting court battles because of a number of cases filed against him allegedly to tarnish his image. While one court after another has acquitted Ali Wazir, legal proceedings against him keep coming, showing the malafide intent of the Pakistani state, as the International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS) had mentioned in a previous statement.
He was imprisoned in 2019 on sedition charges in connection with a controversial speech he made at a Karachi rally. Several cases along the same lines have been filed against him and continue to be filed.
He continues to be stifled politically by the Pakistani state, which signals the weakness of Pakistan’s polity, reported The International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS). Wazir has been consistently targeted for his unequivocal criticism of the Pakistani Army and the human rights abuses that the Pashtun ethnic minority face in Waziristan and neighbouring border areas in the former Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), now a part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, reported IFFRAS.