islamabad
\nPakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary-General Omar Ayub has delivered an explosive speech on the floor of the National Assembly, rejecting the allegations that his party was involved in the violent May 9 protests and reiterating the demand to hold a judicial inquiry into the riots that broke out almost across the country following former prime minister Imran Khan\u2019s arrest last year.
\nAddressing the National Assembly session on Monday, Ayub \u2014 also the leader of the opposition in the lower house of parliament \u2014 said the country suffered immense damages following the assassination of former prime minister Benzair Bhutto in 2007.
\n\u201cI want to clarify that Benazir was martyred due to a bomb blast and the violence that broke out in the country resulted in $2 billion in losses,\u201d the senior PTI leader said.
\nHe said scores of trains, locomotives, and railway stations were also damaged in the violent protests following the ex-PM\u2019s assassination on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi.
\nAyub said Karachi alone suffered damages worth Rs80 to Rs90 billion in three to four days of violence.
\n\u201cMr speaker, I want to ask this House and you that how many people were arrested and how many inquiries were ordered. How many people were put behind bars and how many people were sentenced,\u201d he remarked.
\nDespite billions of rupees loss, Ayub said no action was taken against those involved in the violence in 2007.
\nLikewise, Ayub said $1.8 billion worth of damages were incurred during protests in France on July 8, 2023.
\n\u201cMay 9 was merely an excuse and the actual target was Imran Khan,\u201d he said while lamenting the crackdown on party workers and leaders following the May 9 violent protests triggered by the arrest of the PTI founder in a corruption case from the premises of Islamabad High Court (IHC) in May last year.
\nThe violent protests saw attacks on private and public installations including military installations with the army declaring the riots as \u201cBlack Day\u201d and vowing to punish the accused under the Army Act.
\nResponding to allegations that the PTI was responsible for the violent protests, Ayub, in today\u2019s NA speech, termed his party as \u201cvictim\u201d saying all evidence including CCTV footage related to the May 9 violence were disappeared to obstruct justice.
\nLast week, Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said that the perpetrators and facilitators of the May 9 riots need to be punished as per the Constitution and law of the land to preserve the credibility and faith in the country\u2019s justice system.
\n\u201cThe issue of May 9 riots is not limited to the Pakistan Army but [in fact] concerns the whole nation,\u201d the military\u2019s spokesperson said while addressing a press conference in Rawalpindi on May 7 ahead of the violent protests anniversary.
\nIn the same presser, DG ISPR had demanded \u201cthose involved in the May 9 violent protests to apologise\u201d and shun politics of \u201canarchy\u201d before holding any dialogue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
islamabad Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary-General Omar Ayub has delivered an explosive speech on the floor of the National Assembly, rejecting the allegations that his party was involved in the violent May 9 protests and reiterating the demand to hold a judicial inquiry into the riots that broke out almost across the country following former prime …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64713,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64692\/revisions\/64713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}