Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was given a 10-year prison term on Tuesday in connection with the Cipher case. In this case, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the former foreign minister of Pakistan, has also been sentenced to prison.
“Former PM Imran Khan and PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) vice-president Qureshi have been sentenced to 10 years each inside the prison in the cipher case,” a spokesperson for the PTI told AFP.
The party declared it would appeal the ruling and referred to the case as a “sham.”
Judge Abul Hasnat Zulqarnain of the Special Court, who has presided over the case’s proceedings inside the jail since it began last year, gave the decision orally.
The central issue in this case is a diplomatic document that Imran Khan allegedly failed to return, according to the charge sheet filed by the Federal Investigation Agency. The United States was threatening to depose Imran Khan as prime minister, according to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which has maintained this position throughout.
Even after Imran Khan and Qureshi received post-arrest bail from the Supreme Court in December, their legal disputes persisted. Although Khan was jailed in connection with other charges, Qureshi’s expected release was thwarted by his mistreatment and subsequent re-arrest in a case pertaining to the events of May 9. In addition, citing “legal errors” in the case, Justice Miangul Hasan Aurangzeb temporarily stopped the special court’s proceedings against the accused, including Qureshi, until January 11.
December 13 saw the resumption of the trial in the Adiala district jail when Imran Khan and Qureshi were accused a second time. When they were first charged in October, both had entered not-guilty pleas. The government’s notice of a prison trial was earlier deemed “erroneous” by the Islamabad High Court (IHC), which also ruled that the entire process was void.
The trial took an unexpected turn last week when state defense attorneys were sent in to cover for the previously assigned attorneys, who had consented to lead cross-examinations but had not shown up for the two court appearances that followed. “The trial was nothing less than a ‘joke,’ because the prosecution and defense team both belonged to the government,” Imran Khan said in criticism of the proceedings.
