Pakistani authorities released the wife of former Prime Minister Imran Khan from prison Thursday, nearly nine months after the couple was sentenced on corruption allegations.
Former first lady Bushra Bibi was allowed to leave the Adiala jail near Islamabad a day after a federal high court approved her bail application.
Leaders of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party said Bibi traveled to her residence on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital after her release.
“Welcome back Bushra Bibi!” wrote the PTI on its social media platform X.
Khan, 72, and Bibi were sentenced to 14 years in January on accusations of illegally retaining and selling state gifts received during his time in office from 2018 to 2022. They were later convicted and received additional sentences in several other cases, including charges of illegal marriage.
However, appeals courts overturned or suspended all convictions and sentences in the months that followed, but Pakistani authorities refused to release the couple, instead announcing new charges against them in July related to fresh allegations of selling state gifts worth more than half a million dollars.
Khan denies any wrongdoing and rejects all the more than 150 lawsuits as political victimization by the country’s military-backed government to keep him from returning to national politics, charges his successors and military officials denied.
The cricket star-turned-prime minister was ousted from power through an opposition parliamentary vote of no-confidence 18 months ago before being imprisoned in August 2023.
The legal battles and subsequent convictions have barred Khan from pursuing public office. His party was banned from participating in the national election in February.
Khan maintains that the vote was rigged to prevent his party from winning the vote and allowing his rivals to form a coalition government with the help of the military.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government and military officials reject the allegations.
Appeal by US lawmakers
Meanwhile, Pakistan on Thursday criticized a letter sent to President Joe Biden by more than 60 Democratic lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives, urging him to secure the release of Khan and all other political prisoners.
“We believe such letters and statements are counter-productive and not in line with positive dynamics of Pakistan-U.S. bilateral relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Baloch told her weekly news conference in Islamabad. “These letters are also based on an incorrect understanding of the political situation in Pakistan,” she added.
Baloch made her comments after the group of U.S. Congress members expressed their concerns to Biden about Khan’s incarceration and the alleged widespread human rights abuses in Pakistan.
"At a minimum, we ask your administration to urgently secure the guarantees from the Pakistani government for Khan's safety and well-being and urge U.S. Embassy officials to visit him in prison," the letter to Biden read. It described Khan as a political leader "with widespread support in the country."
The letter noted that in February, the Pakistani parliamentary elections saw a historic level of irregularities, including widespread electoral fraud, state-led efforts to disenfranchise voters, and the arrest and detention of political leaders, journalists, and activists.
"More broadly, developments since the February vote point to a clear turn towards authoritarianism in the country," the letter said. "… Simply put, Pakistan's current system amounts to 'military rule with civilian facade,” stated the letter written by Representative Greg Casar and co-leaders of the group, Representatives Jim McGovern and Summer Lee.
Pakistan’s military has staged three coups and placed the country under more than three decades of dictatorial rule since it gained independence in 1947. The powerful security institution and its intelligence units are persistently accused of meddling in national politics and orchestrating the making or breaking of elected governments.
