Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, has been sentenced to a ten-year prison term for the disclosure of state secrets. Alongside one of his party deputies, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Khan had previously been found guilty of divulging official secrets.
The verdict, announced on January 30 during a hearing at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, was confirmed by Zulfiqar Bukhari, the spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. Khan, aged 71, had earlier been ousted through a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 2022 and is presently serving a three-year prison sentence in a corruption case. He has been incarcerated since August 2023, maintaining that the charges against him are politically motivated.
The cricketer-turned-politician’s sentencing is linked to the Cipher case and revolves around a diplomatic cable that Khan asserts supported his claims of a conspiracy to remove him from power in 2022. This development occurs just a week before the parliamentary elections scheduled for February 8 in the country.
Although Khan’s team is expected to appeal the ruling, he won’t be on the ballot in the upcoming elections. Despite this, he remains a formidable political figure in Pakistan, boasting a substantial grassroots following and an anti-establishment stance. In recent events, Khan’s supporters staged nationwide rallies, some escalating into violence and clashes with police. They criticized the caretaker government, alleging attempts to exclude the PTI party from the upcoming elections.
