Shaukat Yousafzai barred from boarding a KSA-bound flight from Peshawar

Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, a former provincial minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader was barred from boarding a KSA-bound flight from Peshawar airport.

Yousafzai was reportedly scheduled to depart at 9:15 am on Wednesday via Emirates flight EK-637 for Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah.

As reported, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) barred Shaukat Yousafzai was offloaded from a flight heading to Saudi Arabia at Peshawar’s Bacha Khan International Airport on Wednesday morning.

The former minister told the news publication that he was detained for more than two hours at the airport and released by the officials only after the plane had departed.

He stated that after the boarding process was completed, the airport’s security officials came and took him into their custody “without any reason”.

Yousafzai added that when he asked the officials why he was being prevented from boarding the plane, they only replied they had “orders from authorities to not let you fly abroad”.

Former PTI-provincial minister went on to say that he would approach the Peshawar High Court and file a case against the airport’s security officials for offloading him as, according to him, neither was there a first information report against him nor was his name on the Exit Control List.

The development comes a day after his brother Liaqat Ali Yousafzai, who is the PTI’s Shangla chapter president, was taken into custody by the local police along with six other party workers for the alleged violation of Section 144.