Imran Khan claims Gen Munir turned against his wife after he was removed as ISI director general

'As Prime Minister, when I removed General Asim Munir from the post of DG ISI, he sought to approach my wife Bushra Bibi through intermediaries to discuss the matter,' Khan said.

Lahore: Pakistan’s incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan has spoken about the “vindictive nature” of Army Chief Gen Asim Munir saying the field marshal turned against his wife, Bushra Bibi, after being removed from the post of director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) by him.

“As Prime Minister, when I removed General Asim Munir from the post of DG ISI, he sought to approach my wife Bushra Bibi through intermediaries to discuss the matter.

"Bushra Bibi categorically declined, saying that she had no involvement with such affairs and would not meet him. It is General Asim Munir’s vindictive nature that is behind Bushra Bibi’s unjust 14-month incarceration and deplorable inhumane treatment in prison,” Khan said in a post on X on Monday.

Further lambasting Gen Munir, Khan said: “The way my wife has been targeted for personal vengeance is unprecedented. Even during Pakistan’s darkest periods of dictatorship such a thing never happened.

“She was accused of aiding and abetting, an allegation for which no proof has ever been presented, and she is arrested in one false case after another. She is a private citizen, a homemaker with no political involvement. I have not even been allowed to meet her in the past four weeks.” “According to jail regulations, I was scheduled to meet her on June 1 but even that meeting was denied, in complete violation of court orders,” the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supremo, who has been in jail for nearly two years in multiple cases, said.

Khan said the events of May 9, 2023, in which military installations were targeted, were in fact a part of the “London Plan”— the sole purpose of which was to “eliminate Pakistan’s largest political force, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf”.

“Under this premeditated plan, I and several of my party leaders and workers were unlawfully imprisoned. Our democratic mandate was brazenly stolen, and corrupt individuals — Sharifs and Zardaris — were imposed upon the nation.

"We were subjected to relentless fascist oppression, our supporters were shot at, and baseless cases have been fabricated against us,” he said, lambasting the military-backed regime of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Khan said that anti-terrorism courts and numerous judges are "complicit in this campaign of repression against his party".

“Despite repeated demands, they refuse to summon or examine the stolen CCTV footage from May 9, 2023. Not a single judge has the courage to demand those tapes and deliver a verdict based on evidence. We are innocent. Our people are being sentenced without evidence and without the right to a fair trial. We will petition all courts to demand the release and review of that CCTV footage,” he said.

Khan called for the formation of a judicial commission to conduct a transparent investigation into the “massacres (of unarmed pro-democracy protesters) of May 9 and November 26, 2024 in Islamabad”.

“The judiciary in Pakistan has never been more disgraceful than it is today. In the past, there was Justice Munir, whose unjust decisions earned him global notoriety. Today, Justice Qazi Faez Isa is following in the same footsteps. The entire judicial system seems complicit, driven not by justice but by a desire to protect their own jobs and privileges,” he said.

Last week, a Pakistani court sentenced 11 supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), including a lawmaker, for violent protest in the capital on May 9, 2023.

The PTI workers had vandalised public property and attacked defence installations in the country on the day as they protested the arrest of the 72-year-old party founder.

Khan has been incarcerated in Adiala Jail of Rawalpindi, the garrison city, since mid-2023 in connection with multiple cases.