A Pakistan court docket handed former Prime Minister Imran Khan a 10-year jail time period on Tuesday for leaking state secrets and techniques, the previous premier’s media staff mentioned, his second conviction in current months and simply 10 days earlier than the nation’s basic election.
The case pertains to allegations that Khan had made public contents of a secret cable despatched by the nation’s ambassador in Washington to the federal government in Islamabad.
Khan’s social gathering, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), mentioned each Khan and former international minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had been sentenced to 10 years every by a particular court docket.
It mentioned the social gathering would problem the choice and known as it a “sham case”.
“We don’t settle for this unlawful choice,” Khan’s lawyer Naeem Panjutha posted on social media platform X, previously Twitter.
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It’s the second conviction for the embattled former cricket star in current months. He was beforehand sentenced to 3 years in a corruption case. Whereas his jail time period was suspended as he challenged the corruption conviction, it had already dominated him overseas’s basic elections subsequent week.
Regardless of being dominated out of the election, Khan’s authorized staff hoped to get him launched from jail, the place he has been since August final yr away from the general public eye.
The most recent conviction means that’s unlikely at the same time as the fees are contested in the next court docket.
Khan has been preventing dozens of instances since he was ousted from energy in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in 2022.
Khan says the cable was proof of a conspiracy by the Pakistani army and U.S. authorities to topple his authorities in 2022 after he visited Moscow simply earlier than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington and the Pakistan army deny the accusations.
The previous prime minister has beforehand mentioned the contents of the cable appeared within the media from different sources.