ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar said on Wednesday his country would deepen bilateral ties with Iran and work with its new administration under Masoud Pezeshkian, who won a snap presidential election on July 5.

The elections were called after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19. Pezeshkian, a reformist and cardiac surgeon, won decisively with almost three million more votes than Saeed Jalili, a hard-liner and former nuclear negotiator.

“The Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister conveyed that Pakistan looked forward to working closely with the new political administration in Iran to further deepen Pak-Iran bilateral cooperation,” the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement after Dar, who also holds the portfolio of his country’s foreign ministry, held a meeting with Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani in Jeddah. 

Dar is visiting the Saudi city for a special session of the OIC convened on requests by Iran and Palestine following the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh last week. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president when he was killed. 

“The Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister expressed Pakistan’s deep concern and anguish at the despicable attack in Tehran that led to the assassination of the Chief of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh,” the foreign office statement added. 

On Wednesday, in his address at the OIC session, Dar cautioned Iran and Palestine against fulfilling what he described as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s designs for a “wider war” in the Middle East in avenging Haniyeh’s assassination. 

Almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli military campaign in Gaza triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year.

ISLAMABAD: After spending over a year in custody, former Pakistan parliamentarian and ex-PM Imran Khan loyalist Aliya Hamza was released from prison this week on a high court’s directives. 

Hamza was among hundreds of Khan supporters who poured onto Pakistan’s streets to protest their leader’s arrest in a graft case on May 9, 2023. Protesters ransacked military and government properties, which included the house of a senior military official in the eastern city of Lahore. 

Hamza was arrested in the aftermath of the protests and booked under various charges of rioting on May 9. Other supporters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party were tried by military courts after authorities promised to bring the perpetrators of the violence to justice.

The former parliamentarian’s husband, Hamza Jamil Malik, had petitioned the Lahore High Court (LHC) against his wife’s detention. Malik’s counsel told the court on Tuesday she had been imprisoned at the Gujranwala Central Jail despite being granted bail in all cases against her. He petitioned the court for her release, asking it to stop authorities from shifting Hamza to another province from the jail. 

On Wednesday, the LHC ordered authorities to release Hamza from prison. 

“By the grace of god, I have returned [from jail] with respect,” Hamza said in a video message shortly after her release, adding that she had been in custody for 15 months and four days. 

“God willing, Khan and his wife will be with us soon.”

Khan’s PTI says it has been facing a crackdown and mass arrests of its members for standing by Khan, who has been in jail since August last year. Pakistani authorities deny the allegations.

Last month, Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were arrested by Pakistani authorities in a case involving the illegal sale of state gifts, after a court accepted their appeals against a ruling that they had violated the country’s marriage law and ordered their immediate release.

Khan and his wife were sentenced to seven years in prison and fined in February by a court that ruled their 2018 marriage broke the law. Bibi was accused of not completing the waiting period mandated by Islam, called “Iddat,” after divorcing her previous husband and marrying Khan.

The ex-premier has been in jail after being convicted in four cases since last August. Two of the cases have since been suspended and he was acquitted in a third, so the Iddat case was the only one keeping him in prison.

Arguably Pakistan’s most popular politician, Khan says the cases against him are “politically motivated,” aimed at keeping him from returning to power. Pakistani authorities deny this.