Imran Khan says 6 of Pak plotted to kill him, not ‘foreign agencies’

Lahore:

Ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday dismissed the government’s claim that his life was being threatened by “foreign authorities”, saying instead he had identified a total of six people in the country, including three new ones, who plotted to kill him .

Referring to a new video he claims his team sent to his staff abroad, Imran Khan, 70, said its content talks about the people who want to kill him and that it would be made public if he did would be murdered.

“Among the six are three those I named in FIR after an assassination attempt on my life in Punjab last November,” Imran Khan said in a series of tweets on Thursday.

After a gun attack at his rally in the Wazirabad area, some 150 km from Lahore, in which he sustained gunshot wounds in his leg, Mr Khan blamed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and ISI’s top officer, Major General Faisal Naseer Hatch being responsible for a plan to assassinate him.

“The Interior Minister (Sanaullah) says my life is threatened by foreign authorities. Let me make it clear to the whole country that the only threat to my life comes from the 3 people I named after the Wazirabad assassination attempt. The same 3, 3 others I identified in a video statement tried to eliminate me at the ICT Judicial Complex on March 18,” Khan said.

Imran Khan has not identified the three other people he named.

On March 18, security forces clashed with supporters of Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party in Pakistan ahead of his court appearance in connection with a corruption case outside the Islamabad judiciary complex.

In his tweets, Mr Khan categorically said that if an assassination were to take place, the culprits named in the video would bear the blame.

“If any attempt is made on my life now, the same people will be responsible. Just as they tried to pin the blame for the attack in Wazirabad on a religious extremist — a mere smokescreen — they are now trying to create another deception on foreign authorities,” he said.

“I want to make it clear to the nation that the only people responsible for an attempt on my life will be the people I have identified. They are petrified that I will be elected back to power and hold them accountable, hence their efforts to assassinate me,” he said.

Imran Khan’s PTI is pushing for early public polls, but Prime Minister Sharif’s government is sticking to its stance on simultaneous elections across the country.

Prime Minister Sharif on Wednesday said elections are an issue to be decided in parliament, adding that the appropriate time for them to be held is either October or November.

The current National Assembly will end its term on August 13, and elections are expected to be held after that.

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated feed.)