Islamabad: Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and his wife were sentenced to 14 years in jail after being found guilty of graft in a case involving gifts he received while premier. The verdict, a week before national elections, comes a day after Khan was given a prison sentence of 10 years in a case related to leaking state secrets.
“Another sad day in our judicial system history, which is being dismantled,” a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party told media. It was not immediately clear if Khan’s sentences were to run consecutively or concurrently following a trial held inside the jail where he has been detained for much of the time since his arrest in August.
“Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi have been sentenced. Bushra Bibi has not been arrested as yet,” Khan’s lawyer Salman Safdar told AFP news agency. The pair married in 2018, months before Khan was elected prime minister. Bibi, a faith healer who met Khan when he approached her for spiritual guidance, is rarely seen in public.
About 127 million Pakistanis are eligible to vote on election day on February 8, with Khan and PTI at the center of debate despite being squeezed out of the limelight. Since being ousted in 2022, Khan has been buried by court cases he claims have been triggered to prevent his return to office after a campaign of defiance against Pakistan’s military kingmakers. Khan had accused the powerful military — with whom he ruled in partnership for much of his tenure — of orchestrating his ouster in a US-backed conspiracy.
When Khan was first arrested in May last year, riots broke out across the country. But his street power was killed by a military crackdown that saw thousands of supporters detained — 100 of whom are facing closed-door military trials — and dozens of senior leaders forced underground.
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Imran challenges rejection of his nomination papers for polls
Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan filed a plea in the Supreme Court challenging the rejection of his nomination papers for two National Assembly seats in Punjab province for the February 8 polls.
The nomination papers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf supremo were rejected last month for two National Assembly constituencies in Lahore and Mianwali districts of the province on “moral grounds and being convicted in the Toshakhana (national treasury gifts) corruption case.” The 71-year-old former-cricketer-turned-politician had filed a petition at the Lahore High Court (LHC) earlier this month against the rejection of the papers, which the court turned down, upholding the decisions of the returning officer (RO) and appellate tribunal.
In his plea, Imran Khan urged the Supreme Court to declare him eligible to contest the elections from the two constituencies, Geo News reported. “The notification of disqualification under Article 63 (1)(h) is ineligible,” the report cited the plea.
