RAWALPINDI (AFP) – Jailed former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was indicted yesterday for allegedly leaking classified documents, a charge set to keep him in custody in the countdown to national elections due early next year.
Since being ousted in 2022, Khan has been tangled in a slew of legal cases he says are designed to stop him from contesting polls in January, while his party has faced a massive crackdown. A spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said he was charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act in a trial “conducted within the court premises with no access to public or media”.
The case relates to a diplomatic cable the 71-year-old allegedly touted as proof of a “conspiracy” behind the no-confidence vote which turfed him out of office last April.
“We are going to challenge it,” Khan’s lawyer Umar Khan Niazi told reporters outside the jail where the special court was convened.
Khan’s lawyers say the crime he has been charged with carries a possible 14-year prison term, and in the most extreme circumstances, the death penalty.
Pakistan’s supreme court gave rare respite to PTI yesterday by ordering that more than 100 supporters accused of rioting in May should not be prosecuted in military tribunals as planned.
“Under the Supreme Court verdict all the cases, which were being tried in the military courts, cannot be proceeded. They could only be held in the civilian courts,” PTI lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan told reporters.
“Today’s verdict is highly significant and it will help strengthen the constitution, law, and the civilian institutions of the country.”
The violence erupted after Khan was briefly arrested, with unprecedented anger aimed at the military. He was later convicted of graft in August and sentenced to three years in prison.
That sentence was overturned but he was kept in custody on the far more serious charge of sharing state documents he alleged proved how the army conspired with US diplomats to end his premiership.
The United States and Pakistan’s military have denied the claim.
“PTI has been bled to death. The current army chief doesn’t want it around, if it is around, it’s minus Imran Khan,” political analyst Ayesha Siddiqa told AFP.
“There is an entire movement out there by the establishment to eliminate him politically, at least for now,” she said.
The vice-chairman of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a former foreign minister, was also indicted over the same case.
