File photo of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, courtesy PPP Media Cell
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Saturday vowed to proceed in court against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, who alleged on Friday that PPP Co-chairman Asif Zardari was plotting to assassinate him through a “terrorist organization.”
“After terrorist outfits called myself and my party out by name in direct threats, Imran has now made false accusations against my father, former president Asif Ali Zardari,” said Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who is also the chairman of the PPP, in a posting on Twitter. “These statements increase threats to my father, my family and my party. We take them seriously given our history,” he said, referring to persistent threats to the PPP from militant organizations, as well as Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, which was claimed by the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
“We are exploring legal response to Imran’s latest defamatory and dangerous accusations,” he continued. “In the past, he threatened my father that he was ‘in the crosshairs of his gun,’” he said of a speech from last year in which Khan had claimed Zardari was his “next” target. “His [Khan] and his associates’ history as both sympathizers and facilitators of terrorists is well documented,” he wrote.
“When in power he [Khan] released terrorists and arrested democrats, he handed over Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to terrorist organizations, his party funds terrorist groups to this day. All of this will be taken into account if any attack were to take place against myself, my father, or my party,” warned Bhutto-Zardari. “Imran must realize every time his wife has a dream he cannot just come on TV and make accusations about people. Her dreams won’t stand up in court,” he said, referring to Bushra Bibi.
“His latest accusation that my family has any association to a terrorist organization or that we would employ them to cause him harm not only defies logic but exposes us all to an increased threat. PPP will challenge him. We cannot let populist fiction dominate our discourse, poison our politics and damage our democracy. We will not tolerate being victims of terrorists and put up with propaganda from their political front-men,” he added.
Earlier, addressing a joint press conference, senior PPP leaders Nayyar Bukhari, Farhatullah Babar and Qamar Zaman Kaira slammed Khan over his allegations, saying he had “lost his mind” and the party would issue a legal notice demanding he retract the accusations. Stressing that Khan’s allegation was “baseless and a lie,” Bukhari said Khan’s political isolation had left him depressed and panicked. “In this panic, he keeps on blaming various institutions—whether it is the establishment, the Election Commission or the former Army chief,” he said, stressing that none of the PTI chairman’s allegations had any basis in reality or he would’ve approach the appropriate forums to voice them.
Demanding that Khan retract his statement, Bukhari warned that if didn’t, the PPP had the right to approach courts for civil and criminal proceedings.
Babar, meanwhile, questioned how Khan believed his “enemies” could hire militants to kill someone popularly known as ‘Taliban Khan.’ Describing the PTI chief as a patron of militants, he said: “I genuinely believe that Imran Khan has now lost senses, and he’s out of his senses because of the loss of power.”
Kaira, who is part of the federal cabinet, said the nation, media, and civil society should unite in demanding Khan share the evidence he had received prior to alleging the assassination plot. Stressing that Khan’s politics were not democratic, but rather fascist, he added: “Whenever Imran Khan is in a difficult situation and in depression, he tries to get out of that by putting his failures on his opponents, spreading sensationalism and attacking institutions.”
In a televised address on Friday evening, the ousted prime minister had alleged that he was aware of a plot to assassinate him that had been hatched by Zardari in collusion with “agencies”—a euphemism for the country’s intelligence setup. Claiming Zardari had used money secured through corruption to pay a “terror outfit” for his assassination, he said he was sharing this with the public so they would know who was behind the threat.