An audio recording purportedly capturing a Zoom meeting between former Prime Minister and PTI head Imran Khan and US Congresswoman Maxine Moore Waters has been leaked on social media. This comes at a time when the government is taking tough stands against his supporters and party workers who stormed the houses of senior Army officers in Pakistan.
The purported audio revealed that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief was asking the US lawmaker to raise her voice against “human rights violations” in Pakistan, the report said.
In the audio clip, Imran Khan can be heard informing Maxine Moore Waters on the situation in Pakistan and urging her to issue a statement in his support.
“I received three bullets in one assassination attempt. My government was removed by ex-army chief [General Qamar Javed Bajwa] because the military establishment is very powerful here. He conspired with people who are in power currently and toppled my government,” Khan was heard telling Maxime in the purported audio clip.
“We just want a statement highlighting the [crackdown] and that would really help us. If someone like you Maxine speaks up it makes a lot of waves,” he added.
Khan was arrested by the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers at the Islamabad High Court premises on May 9, which triggered unrest across the country. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, protesters stormed the army headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi and also torched a corps commander’s house in Lahore.
Law enforcement agencies have arrested over 7,000 PTI workers across Pakistan, 4,000 of them from Punjab. Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, was ousted from power in April last year after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he alleged was part of a US-led conspiracy targeting him because of his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China and Afghanistan.
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