Who tried to assassinate Imran Khan? And why?

At the end of August I warned in The Spectator that, in Pakistan politics, ‘death by assassination is always a risk.’ And so yesterday’s attempted assassination of Imran Khan – while shocking – should have come as no surprise.

Perhaps the bigger surprise was that he survived. As Imran himself stated immediately afterwards, ‘Allah has given me another life.’ It seems that he owes his life to a young man wearing a snazzy FILA sports shirt who wrestled with the assassin as he was firing his pistol – though some reports have it that there was a second assassin firing an automatic rifle.

The circumstances of the aftermath of the assassination attempt bear some scrutiny. Within hours of the shooting, the alleged assassin, Faisal Butt, looking somewhat bedraggled, was shoved in front of a camera by the police – an unusual procedure. One assumes that this was done on the orders of a higher authority.