- The lawyer says Ayub’s medical certificate was produced before the court.
- The NA opposition leader will appear in court on January 30.
- PTI’s Sanam Javaid Aliya Hamza others named in multiple cases.
SARGODHA: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders’ legal woes continue to pile up as an anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Thursday issued a bailable arrest warrant for the Assembly opposition leader National, Omar Ayub, for failing to appear in court in a case related to the May 9 riots.
Confirming the development, Ayub’s lawyer Sajid Mehmood said the NA opposition leader’s medical certificate was submitted to the Sargodha court and he would appear in the case on January 30.
The issuance of the arrest warrant comes in the backdrop of multiple cases registered against PTI’s Ayub, Punjab Assembly Opposition Leader Malik Ahmed Khan Bachar, MNA Bilal Ejaz, Sanam Javaid and Aliya Hamza and 300 workers of the party at Kamar Mashani and Musa Khel police stations in Mianwali.
The cases involve allegations of vandalism at Pakistan Air Force installations and government properties.
The latest arrest warrant came a day after an ATC in Faisalabad issued non-bailable arrest warrants against Ayub and Senate Opposition Leader Shibli Faraz in another related case on May 9.
The party’s leadership, including its founder Imran Khan, along with senior leaders like Shah Mahmood Qureshi and others, remain embroiled in a plethora of legal cases due to the May 9 incident in which military installations, including the Barracks, were spotted General General Corps (GHQ) Rawalpindi, Lahore Commander’s House: being vandalized by an angry mob following the arrest of Khan in a corruption case.
Since then, both the then Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government, the interim government and the administration of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have blamed the unrest on the PTI, an accusation vehemently denied by the former ruling party.
Following the violent incidents that occurred throughout the country, those involved in the May 9 riots were tried by military courts that imposed severe sentences of two to ten years on a total of 85 “guilty” offenders.
The issue of the May 9 riots has also become a key issue in ongoing negotiations with the government, as the party has demanded the formation of a judicial commission to investigate the riots.
According to the ‘Letter of Demands’ written by the PTI, the commission (the first of the two and the second tasked with investigating the events surrounding the party’s November 2024 protest in Islamabad) must “carry out an in-depth investigation about the legality of the events that led to Khan’s arrest.”
