A 10-year prison sentence has been handed to Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, for the charge of leaking state secrets. Alongside one of his party deputies, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Khan was found guilty of disclosing official secrets and the court announced the verdict on Jan. 30 at a hearing at the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, according to Zulfiqar Bukhari, spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. Khan, aged 71, was ousted through a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 2022 and is currently serving a three-year prison sentence in a corruption case. He has been in jail since August 2023, asserting that the charges against him are politically motivated.
The sentencing of the former cricketer-turned-politician is linked to the Cipher case and pertains to a diplomatic cable that Khan asserts supported his claims of a conspiracy to remove him from power in 2022. This development arrives just a week before the parliamentary elections scheduled for February 8 in the country.
Khan’s team is likely to contest today’s ruling and even though he won’t be on the ballot in next month’s elections, he remains a influential political figure in Pakistan, owing to a substantial grassroots following along with an anti-establishment stance. Recently, his supporters organized nationwide rallies, some of which turned violent and resulted in clashes with the police, expressing dissent against the caretaker government’s efforts to sideline the PTI party in the upcoming elections.