Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday expressed concern after an Egyptian court sentenced the deposed president Mohamed Morsi to death for his role in a mass jailbreak in 2011.
“Sentencing of deposed President Morsi to death bodes ill for the Egyptian people and for Egyptian democracy,” Imran said in a message posted on micro-blogging website Twitter.
Comparing Morsi’s sentence to the hanging of former Pakistani prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979, the PTI chairman called on Egypt to “learn from Pakistan’s bitter experience”. “Pakistan has suffered tremendously as a result of the hanging of its democratic leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto by a military dictator,” he added.
“The Pakistani nation and democracy in Pakistan continue to suffer the fallout from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s hanging as the Pakistani polity stands polarised and militarised even today,” he was quoted as saying in a press statement issued by the PTI.
Khan said that sentencing democratically elected leaders to death “does not kill their ideas and aspirations”. “Ideas that bring leaders to power through the ballot box cannot be obliterated through deposing them undemocratically and then sentencing them to death. The only real battle of ideas is fought through the ballot box by winning the support of the people,” he said.