Pakistan court sentences former PM Imran Khan to 10 years for revealing state secrets, his party calls case a ‘sham’
- The case pertains to allegations Khan made public the contents of a secret cable sent by the country’s ambassador in Washington to the government in Islamabad
- The decision – called a sham by Kahn’s party – comes ahead of February’s elections, which Khan is barred from because of a previous conviction
A Pakistani court on Tuesday sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and one of his party deputies to 10 years in prison each, after finding them guilty of revealing official secrets.
It is the harshest sentence against the former cricketer and comes only days before a national election.
The case pertains to allegations that Khan had made public the contents of a secret cable sent by the country’s ambassador in Washington to the government in Islamabad.
Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said both Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had been sentenced to 10 years each by a special court.
We don’t accept this illegal decision
It said the party would challenge the decision and called it a “sham case”.
“We don’t accept this illegal decision,” Khan’s lawyer Naeem Panjutha posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Khan is alleged to have waved a confidential document – a classified cable – at a rally after he was toppled. The document – dubbed Cipher – has not been made public by either the government or Khan’s lawyers, but was apparently diplomatic correspondence between the Pakistani ambassador to Washington and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.
Khan says the cable was proof of a conspiracy by the Pakistani military and US government to topple his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington and the Pakistan military deny the accusations.
The former prime minister previously said the contents of the cable appeared in the media from other sources.
It is the second conviction for the embattled former cricket star in recent months. He was previously sentenced to three years in a corruption case.
The latest development comes ahead of the February 8 parliamentary elections in Pakistan – a vote that Khan is barred from running in because of his previous criminal conviction.
Although Khan will not be on the ballot for the election, he remains a potent political force because of his grass roots following and anti-establishment rhetoric. He says the legal cases against him were a plot to sideline him ahead of the vote.
Khan was prime minister from 2018 to 2022 – when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote after losing the backing of the nation’s military kingmakers.
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As opposition leader, he waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the top brass, accusing them of ousting him in a US-backed conspiracy and of plotting an assassination attempt which wounded him.
Khan was briefly arrested last May, and Islamabad used the resulting unrest to justify a sweeping crackdown on PTI, which has seen many senior leaders defect or go underground.
“This is a murder of justice,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a human-rights activist and political analyst.
“But his popularity among the people will grow in leaps and bounds as his sympathisers will increase because of this gross injustice.”
Some 127 million Pakistanis are eligible to vote in next week’s election, with Khan and PTI at the centre of debate despite being squeezed out of the limelight.
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Khan has been fighting dozens of cases since he was ousted from power.
Pakistan has seen violent demonstrations since Khan’s May 2023 arrest. Authorities have cracked down on his supporters and party since then.
Pakistan’s independent human rights commission has said there is little chance of a free and fair parliamentary election next month because of “pre-poll rigging.” It also expressed concern about authorities rejecting the candidacies of Khan and senior figures from his party.
Reporting by Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
