A special court in Pakistan sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 10 years in prison Tuesday on charges that while in office, he made public state secrets involving the United States.
Khan’s former foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, was also given a 10-year sentence in the lawsuit stemming from a classified cable, internally known as a cipher.
Khan claimed the diplomatic cable had documented the alleged U.S. role in the toppling of his government with the help of the Pakistani military to punish him for pushing Pakistan to have a foreign policy free of American influence. Washington and the Pakistan military denied the accusations.
The 71-year-old former prime minister, who was ousted in April 2022 by an opposition alliance, has rejected the cipher trial as politically motivated and manufactured by the country’s powerful military.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party decried the court ruling as “a complete mockery and disregard of the law” in a trial “with no access to media or public.” The party said its legal team “will challenge the decision in a higher court” and “hopefully will get this sentence suspended.”
The single-judge tribunal conducted the trial inside a high-security prison near Islamabad, with no access to foreign and most mainstream Pakistani media representatives.
Khan’s lawyer, Salman Safdar, described the verdict as unconstitutional, saying it would not withstand the scrutiny of a higher court.
“The cross-examination on as many as 18 witnesses was carried out in the late hours and earlier this morning,” Safdar told reporters. “The legal team was kept out; they were not given permission to enter the jail.”
Tuesday’s conviction under the Official Secrets Act comes ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for February 8.
The cipher was sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington in March 2022, a month before a parliamentary vote of no-confidence removed Khan from power.
The ousted Pakistani leader has maintained that the U.S., in the cipher, had encouraged the military to orchestrate the vote, and he was obligated to share the cipher's contents with his voters to expose the foreign "conspiracy" against his government.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, described the nature of the charges against Khan as serious but said his case still deserved a fair legal process.
“The opacity and timing of this verdict point to clear political motivations focused on further undermining Khan before next week’s polls,” Kugelman told VOA. “He was already unable to contest elections due to an earlier conviction, but this new one underscores just how far the state is willing to go in its ongoing vendetta against Khan.”
Khan has been in jail since August after being convicted on controversial corruption charges and sentenced to three years behind bars. He was subsequently disqualified from contesting an election for five years in line with laws that bar convicts from running in elections.
The cricket hero-turned-politician denies any wrongdoing, accusing the military of orchestrating nearly 200 charges against him, ranging from rioting and corruption to terrorism since his ouster.
"All too predictable,” said Madiha Afzal, a Brooking Institution scholar, on the X social media platform, while commenting on Tuesday’s court ruling against Khan.
“A jail trial so that the public could not see Khan, the right to defense counsel denied, and today, a rushed verdict of 10 years in prison for Imran Khan and Shah Mehmood Qureshi in the cipher case — all 9 days before the general election,” she wrote.
Khan swept to power in 2018 when his PTI won the 2018 parliamentary elections, but he developed differences with the military over key appointments and foreign policy matters that critics blame for his removal from office.
The military directly ruled Pakistan for more than three decades, and generals have been constantly accused of playing a role in making or dislodging elected governments since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947.
The security institution denies it interferes in political matters, but its former chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, acknowledged in a nationally televised speech just days before his retirement in November 2022 that the military had been meddling in politics for the past 70 years.
A government crackdown backed by the military has detained scores of PTI leaders in recent months, forcing many others to quit the party or join anti-Khan political forces. The party is also banned from holding election rallies, and mainstream media cannot air Khan’s name.
Despite the crackdown, recent public opinion polls showed Khan is the most popular politician in Pakistan, and the PTI is the largest national political party.
