Pakistan in turmoil: Who are the men behind the daring attack on former PM Imran Khan?

Protests have broken out across Pakistan after the assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Imran Khan in Wazirabad while he was leading a rally against the ruling dispensation. The attack, carried out by two men, left around a dozen injured, though unofficial reports have claimed fatalities. Reports also say that one of the attackers was lynched by the crowd and Khan’s bodyguards, while the other was taken into custody.

A viral video shows one of the attackers being overpowered by a man – though it is not immediately known whether he was one of Khan’s supporters or a policeman in plain clothes. Little is known so far about the attackers or their motive for the attack, though authorities have identified them as Faisal Butt and Mohammad Naveed. 

Naveed is a resident of Sodhra, a small town in the Wazirabad tehsil of Pakistan’s Gujranwala district. Son of one Mohammad Bashir, he was arrested with a 9 mm pistol and two empty magazines. Reports say another attacker had an automatic rifle. Khan was shot in the leg while two of his close aides suffered injuries on the hand and face. 

Naveed belongs to the Arain caste, an influential Punjabi agricultural tribe with a strong political identity and organisation, found mainly in the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sindh. Khan belongs to the Niazi Pashtun tribe. 

Police are probing all angles into the attack, though at the outset, it seems to be politically motivated, and the attackers seem to be guns for hire. Another video of the arrested attacker is viral in which he claims he’d come to kill Khan because he believed the former PM was “misleading” people. “Sirf Imran Khan ko maarna tha (I came only to kill Imran Khan),” said the shooter on camera. He also said he had come on a bike to Gujranwala and left it at his uncle’s place.

Khan’s aides have claimed that the attack was carried out by a terrorist organisation. Incidentally, several PTI leaders had earlier claimed that terror groups in Afghanistan have been roped in to assassinate the former PM.

READ | Did former Pakistan PM Imran Khan predict his own assassination weeks before Wazirabad rally?