Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the head of the opposition in Pakistan, was taken into custody on Saturday, according to his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, just hours after he promised to take any postponement of the elections to court.
The particular cause for Qureshi’s detention—he has served as Pakistan’s foreign minister twice—was not immediately clear, according to party spokesman Zulfi Bukhari, who spoke to Reuters. An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the interim information minister.
On the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, Bukhari criticised the detention and claimed that he was “arrested for doing a press conference and re-affirming PTI’s stance against all tyranny and pre-poll rigging that is going on currently in Pakistan.”
Imran Khan, the leader of the PTI party, was found guilty of graft and was sentenced to three years in prison as well as a five-year electoral ban. He claims he did nothing wrong.
Khan won the most recent election in 2018 and held the position of prime minister until he was forced out in a vote of no-confidence in 2022.
The election is scheduled to take place by November, 90 days after the dissolution of parliament last week, but uncertainty surrounds the exact date as the country deals with constitutional, political, and economic difficulties.
