Less than two weeks before the nation votes in an election that his party has been prevented from contesting, former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan was sentenced to ten years in prison on Tuesday.
Khan received his sentence within the confines of Adiala jail, where he has been held since his arrest in August. He claims that a number of court cases have been stacked against him in an attempt to keep him from taking office again.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the vice president of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and Khan’s foreign minister, received the same sentence.
“Former prime minister Imran Khan and PTI vice-president Qureshi have been sentenced to 10 years each,” a spokesman for the party told AFP.
State media also reported the convictions and sentences.
The case against both men related to allegations they leaked classified state documents.
Khan was prime minister from 2018 to 2022 — when he was ousted in a no confidence vote after losing the backing of the nation’s military kingmakers.
As opposition leader he waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the top brass, accusing them of ousting him in a US-backed conspiracy and of plotting an assassination attempt which wounded him.
Khan was briefly arrested last May, and Islamabad used the resulting unrest to justify a sweeping crackdown on PTI which has seen many senior leaders defect or go underground.
“This is murder of justice,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a human right activist and political analyst.
“But his popularity among the people will grow in leaps and bounds as his sympathisers will increase because of this gross injustice.”
PTI has been largely absent from the public sphere in the runup to elections.
The party has been stripped of its election symbol, and candidates forced to run as individuals.
At the same time Nawaz Sharif — head of one of the dynastic parties which have
Historically led Pakistan—has seen his numerous convictions overturned by the courts since his return from self-imposed exile.
Experts interpret it as an indication that the three-time former prime minister is the preferred choice of the senior leadership, who have dominated Pakistan directly for the majority of its history.
Elections must be held in Pakistan within ninety days of the dissolution of parliament, which took place in August five months ago, in accordance with the country’s constitution.
The need to redrew constituency boundaries after a new census in 2023 was cited by the election commission as the reason for the delay.
A caretaker government, trusted by the military establishment, has been in charge of Pakistan in the interim.
