Court orders show Pakistani police cleared two sisters of former prime minister Imran Khan of taking part in anti-government rioting before arresting them again, according to a claim circulating widely on social media.
The accusation was posted Saturday by the account @MarioNawfal, which wrote that when police seized Aleema Khan off the streets of Lahore this month, they held no valid warrant and faced no active charges against her. The same post states that court orders established her innocence of involvement in rioting before officers moved in a second time.
The claim lands in the middle of a broader confrontation between Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and the government, which has moved to shut down the capital ahead of a protest march scheduled for Sunday. Khan's three sisters were arrested under a colonial-era public-order law, and Uzma and Noreen Bibi were detained for thirty days, according to reporting on the detentions. Roads into Islamabad have been barricaded with shipping containers, and tens of thousands of police have been deployed, with further reporting describing two thousand containers sealing the capital and metal spikes being fitted to bridges.
The reaction to the detentions has spread across accounts that cover South Asian politics and international breaking news. The @MarioNawfal post is one of several circulating the claim about the court orders, and the wider story of the crackdown has been carried by outlets including The Guardian, India Today and the Pakistan Observer.
Separately, the Lahore High Court sought a report from the government on Aleema Khan's detention, and a further application asked the court to allow her to receive medicines and clothes, according to the Pakistan Observer. Khan's son has urged PTI supporters to stay away from Adiala jail, warning in remarks carried in world news coverage that gathering there could endanger his father's life.
The crackdown has reached beyond the family. Reporting on the arrests states that legislators, family members and more than fifteen hundred party workers have been caught up in the government's moves ahead of the march, which PTI has framed as a demand for Khan's release. The Islamabad lockdown is the most visible sign of how seriously the government is treating the planned demonstration.
Next News Network could not independently verify the claim that police cleared Aleema Khan of riot involvement before arresting her again, or that no warrant existed at the time of her detention. The assertion rests on court orders described in social media posts and on reporting about the Lahore High Court's inquiry into the detention, not on documentation reviewed by this outlet.
The claim came as other accounts turned to unrelated flashpoints across Europe. The account @visegrad24 reported that a massive protest against the entry of tens of thousands of illegal migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta was under way in Madrid on Saturday. That same account reported on the reaction inside Berlin's police force after the far-left Die Linke's election victory, quoting WELT describing one reaction from within the police as "Berlin has fallen," with officers expressing concern over the party's plans for policing, domestic intelligence and the fight against clan crime.
In sport, the account @clashreport reported that the Republic of Ireland delayed its pre-match press conference before Sunday's UEFA Nations League game against Israel in Hungary, amid calls from campaigners to boycott the fixture over the Israel-Gaza war. The delay followed a meeting of players to discuss the match.
The Washington Times, meanwhile, reported that protests against war crimes verdicts are adding pressure on Kosovo's government.
Taken together, the posts illustrate how quickly a domestic security crackdown in one country can be folded into a wider international feed of protest and political unrest. For PTI supporters, the focus remains on the capital and on the jailed former prime minister. The march is scheduled for Sunday. Whether it proceeds, and whether the detentions of Khan's sisters draw further legal action, remains to be seen.
The Lahore High Court's request for a report on Aleema Khan's detention places the government's handling of the case under judicial scrutiny even as the security measures around Islamabad tighten. The application seeking permission for her to receive medicines and clothes points to concerns about her condition in custody, though no details of her health were provided in the coverage reviewed.
It is not yet known whether the court orders described in the social media posts will be produced publicly or what they state in full. It is also not known how many of the party workers detained remain in custody, or what charges, if any, they face.
Next News Network could not independently verify the underlying claim that the sisters were cleared of rioting before their arrests, and readers should treat the assertion as an allegation carried by the accounts named above rather than as a confirmed fact. The reporting that does exist independently concerns the detentions themselves, the duration of two of them, the court's inquiry, and the scale of the security buildup in the capital.
What is clear from the accounts and the coverage is the sequence: sisters arrested, a court asked for answers, a party vowing to march, and a capital sealed off in response. Each side is now waiting on the other.
Our Take
The timing here tells its own story. You do not seal a capital with two thousand shipping containers and metal spikes on bridges because you expect a quiet weekend. You do it because you are worried about what happens when people show up. And the arrest of Imran Khan's sisters, whatever the legal paperwork says, looks less like law enforcement and more like pressure applied to a family in order to reach a man already behind bars. If the court orders described in these posts are real, and if they show the sisters were cleared before being swept up again, then the government has some explaining to do about why the warrants, the charges and the timing do not line up. The Lahore High Court asking for a report is a start, but a report is not accountability. Meanwhile the West watches Pakistan's internal crackdown with one eye and its own migrant crises with the other, and the pattern is the same everywhere: governments reaching for the heavy hand when they feel the ground moving. PTI supporters will march anyway. The question is what the state does when they do.
