Achakzai fears Khan may be treated like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) Chairman Mahmood Khan Achakzai, while addressing a public meeting in Qila Saifullah, Balochistan, warned on Monday that a dark chapter of history could repeat itself, fearing Imran Khan could be treated the same way Zulifqar Ali Bhutto was.

On April 4, 1979, the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whose government had been illegally removed by the dictator Zia ul Haq, was hanged in the Central Jail Rawalpindi.

Former Prime Minister Bhutto was sentenced to death by Lahore High Court in 1978 in an alleged politically motivated murder case, while the Supreme Court later upheld the original sentence.

Mary Anne Weaver, a foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, narrated the last moments of Bhutto in 1993, writing, “At 1:45 A.M. on April 4, 1979, four wardens entered the prison cell of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a waifishly thin man, nearly wasted away by malaria, dysentery, and hunger strikes. Two of them lifted him by the arms and two by the feet, and he was carried out.”

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto wrote in his last testimony, which was later compiled into a book ‘If I Am Assassinated’, that he was confined in a “in this narrow, dark, sinking death cell for 22 or 23 hours every day.”

Founder Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan has been imprisoned for over a year in numerous cases ranging from allegations of corruption and violence against state institutions.

Achakzai alleged that the PTI workers have faced state repression while protesting for their leader’s release, while emphasising that they won’t let history repeat itself.

The PkMAP chief demanded that Khan and his party workers should be released from jail, warning that failure to do so could push the country towards civil unrest.