Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is facing corruption charges, said on Thursday he would not join an investigation by the powerful anti-graft agency while he was out on bail, nor bow down under the pressure that the government was mounting on him and his party.
“If I am left all alone, all alone, I will still continue to stand for real freedom in this country. No one should be under the misconception that I will pull back because of this pressure,” Khan told a hurriedly-called newser in his Zaman Park residence in Lahore.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which has in the past investigated, put on trial and jailed all those who have served as prime minister since 2008, had earlier summoned Khan for investigation into the graft charges, a spokesman said.
Khan was arrested on the charges, which he denies, on May 9 and later set free on court-ordered bail that was extended to May 31.
In a statement addressed to the NAB’s deputy director, and shown to Reuters by one of Khan’s lawyers, the former prime minister called the allegations against him “absolutely false, frivolous and concocted.”
Khan’s arrest triggered a wave of violence that deepened political instability in the South Asian nation of 220 million.
On Thursday, Khan’s aide Iftikhar Durrani allowed journalists into some areas of Khan’s Lahore home to “look for terrorists.”
