ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) following the recent arrests of PTI members in relation to the prohibited funding case.
According to the petition’s contents, PTI asked the court to prevent the agency from making arrests and conducting raids after the FIA allegedly harassed Senator Saifullah Niazi during a raid on his home.
Both pleas were lodged by Omer Ayub Khan, the PTI additional secretary general, who requested the court to restrain the law enforcement agencies from arresting the PTI leadership.
The PTI officials’ homes in Lahore and Islamabad had been raided by the FIA the day before in order to detain party members who had been mentioned in the funding case for allegedly refusing to cooperate.
Prior to the lengthy march, the former ruling party files a separate petition asking for protection from “mass arrests.”
The argument made in the plea was that the PTI created the website “namnzoor.com” to solicit donations from Pakistanis living abroad after their government was overthrown. The main donor can go to the website and enter their information to access the payment page, where they can pay with their bank account or PayPal. According to the statement, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is receiving information on these donations in accordance with the Election Act of 2017.
The petition said that the incumbent coalition government “is unable to compete with the petitioner [PTI] in political arena…[and] has come up with an illegal scheme to stop public, and particularly overseas Pakistanis in UK, USA, and Europe” from donation to the PTI. It claimed that the government wanted to ‘financially incapacitate’ the party. “By stopping the donations, the intention is to cripple the PTI financially to incapacitate [it] to conduct political activities and exercise its fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution,” it added.
The document continued by stating that “the FIA initiated an inquiry which is not known to the petitioners but presumably the inquiry was concerning the operating” of the aforementioned website “in order to achieve this illegal objective.”
“It is evident that notices have to be delivered to the petitioner party first in the event of any such inquiry, giving PTI the chance to present its case and respond to the FIA’s questions in this regard. However, a raid was carried out on Senator Saifullah Nyazee’s home on September 19, 2022, without sending any such notices or even alerting the PTI.
The lawsuit also claimed that the FIA served notices and carried out raids at Chaudhry Mohammad Iqbal’s office, whose business offers “technical help” for the upkeep of the website. The ongoing inquiry into its financial affairs a violation of the elections act, according to the party.
The PTI asked the court in its second appeal to halt FIA and Islamabad police actions against PTI officials and sympathizers in advance of a probable long march.
It expressed concerns over mass arrests and accused the ruling coalition of starting a campaign against Imran Khan and putting obstacles in the way of the impending march.
