KARACHI: PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has claimed that his opponents have hired companies that are “preparing material” for his character assassination.

He said this while talking to actor Shaan Shahid during an interview on Hum News on Wednesday.

Mr Khan’s remarks come as PTI-linked social media accounts have warned supporters of the dangers of “deepfakes”, videos which use a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to create life-like but fake videos of people.

Separately, while speaking on a podcast, he claimed that his former allies, Jahangir Tareen and Aleem Khan, expected him to do what the Sharifs used to do, i.e. to legalise all their illegal activities after coming into power.

“This is where we developed differences,” he said, adding that looking at where they had ended up now (in the PML-N camp), it was obvious that they had no problems with corruption, the PTI chief told a trio of interviewers during the podcast.

“I had to face mafias, the biggest of which is the Sharif mafia [...] they always attack on a personal level because […] are indulging in corruption for the past 35 years. When someone [points out] their corruption, they attack a person’s character,” Mr Khan said during his interview with Shaan Shahid.

He said his ex-wife Jemima Goldsmith was also targeted in the past and a campaign was run against her accusing her of being part of the “Jewish lobby”. A false case was also filed against her accusing her of exporting antique tiles from the country, a Dawn.com report quoted the former PM as having said during the interview.

Mr Khan said the Sharifs had made preparations to launch a character assassination drive against him after Eid. “Now that Eid is over, you will see they are fully prepared for my character assassination. They have hired companies that are readying the material.”

He said that 60 per cent of the federal cabinet was out on bail. “The father (Shehbaz) is on bail and so is the son (Hamza). Maryam is also out on bail and Nawaz Sharif has been convicted [while] his sons have fled abroad. So what [other] defence will they have?”

Mr Khan said that in a democracy, they were required to give an answer for the allegations levelled against them. “You can’t come up in any democracy if you are out on bail; you can’t get any position.”

He claimed that instead of giving an answer for the billions of rupees they had stolen, the Sharifs would now focus on his character assassination.

“What was Jemima’s crime? She was my wife [...] now they have found Farah [Khan]. Farah’s crime is that she is a close associate of Bushra begum (his wife),” he said.

He said the Sharifs had “made tapes” similar to the ones of former chief justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar and the late judge Arshad Malik.

“This is mafia style. I only want the nation to understand that if you want to smear anyone’s name, there are companies that can help you to achieve this.”

He said the PTI had announced its long march to Islamabad by the end of May due to which the Sharifs wanted to lower his respect in the eyes of the public and assassinate his character.

“But they have been doing this before too. This is not something new.”

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2022