Exclusive | Pakistan is being run by the 'establishment': Imran Khan

Pakistan's establishment is resorting to "all kinds of blackmail" to ensure a continuous outflow of leaders, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader andformer prime minister Imran Khan told WION in Islamabad on Wednesday after he was until June 19 in the Al-Qadir Trust case involving an alleged corruption of over Rs 50 billion.

The South Asian nation's military-intelligence nexus is often dubbed as "establishment", and has been widely described as the real power running the country's state of affairs.

"The government and establishment are the same thing. The country is being run by the establishment," Khan told WION on Tuesday.

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Asked about PTI's top politicians abandoning ship after the events of May 9, 2023, Imran Khan told WION:

"There is unprecedented pressure put on the individuals by the agencies. Such things have never happened before."

A number of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's top leaders, includingShireen Mazari, Fawad Chaudhry, Imran Ismail, Aamir Mehmood Kiani, Ali Zaidi and Maleeka Bokhari, among others have left the party in the weeks following May 9, 2023.

"They [agencies] approach them, they blackmail them, they show them the tapes, they destroy their businesses. They barge into their homes," he added.

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Khan said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif-led ruling alliance's accusationdeemingPTI to be a "terror outfit" is nothing short of a conspiracy.

"It is a conspiracy to somehow get the PTI out of the election race," he said. "This has nothing to do with the events of May 9," added the PTI chief while referring to the violent demonstrations which erupted in parts of Pakistan following his arrest on May 9 in the Al-Qadir Trust case.

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