Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and his wife are sentenced to 14 years in jail after being found guilty of graft in a case involving gifts he received while premier.
Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was found guilty of graft and sentenced to 14 years in prison on Wednesday. The ruling came just one week before national elections, when he had been previously given a 10-year sentence.
Following his Tuesday 10-year sentence for leaking state secrets, Khan and his spouse were found guilty of graft in a case involving gifts he accepted while premier.
Next Thursday’s election in Pakistan is already clouded by accusations of tampering; Khan is not allowed to run and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is facing severe repression.
A party spokesman told the media, “Another sad day in our judicial system history, which is being dismantled.”
It was not immediately clear if Khan’s sentences were to run consecutively or concurrently following a trial held inside the jail where he has been detained for much of the time since his arrest in August.
But his lawyer, Salman Safdar, confirmed, he had been sentenced alongside his wife, Bushra Bibi, who had been on remand throughout the trial.
Intazar Hussain Panjutha, one of Khan’s legal team, said Bibi had surrendered herself to authorities.
Bibi, a faith healer who met Khan when he approached her for spiritual guidance, rarely appears in public and only wearing a face-covering hijab when she does.
The pair married in 2018, months before Khan was elected prime minister.
About 127 million Pakistanis are eligible to vote come Thursday, with Khan and his PTI at the centre of debate despite being squeezed out of the limelight.
On Tuesday a bomb blast claimed by the Islamic State group near a PTI rally killed four people and wounded six others in the Balochistan provincial capital of Quetta.
PTI said three of its activists had been killed in the blast, just hours after Khan was sentenced.
Since being ousted in 2022, Khan has been buried by court cases he claims have been triggered to prevent his return to office after a campaign of defiance against Pakistan’s military kingmakers.
The 71-year-old had accused the powerful military — with whom he ruled in partnership for much of his tenure — of orchestrating his ouster in a US-backed conspiracy.
When Khan was first arrested in May last year, riots broke out across the country.
But his street power was killed by a military crackdown that saw thousands of supporters detained — 100 of whom are facing closed-door military trials — and dozens of senior leaders forced underground.
“You have to take revenge for every injustice with your vote on February 8,” Khan said in a statement posted on his X profile reacting to his 10-year sentence on Tuesday.
“Tell them that we are not sheep that can be driven with a stick.”
As a result of the ongoing crackdown, PTI has moved most of its campaigning online, where it has been bogged down by state-imposed internet blackouts.
The erstwhile cricket star Khan’s party has also lost its cricket bat election symbol; in a country with low literacy rates, icons are essential for identifying candidates on voting papers.
Head of one of the two dynastic parties that have ruled Pakistan historically, Nawaz Sharif, has returned from self-imposed exile and witnessed the courts overturn a plethora of his convictions.
According to analysts, this indicates that the military, which has ruled Pakistan directly for less than half of its history, is endorsing the three-time former prime minister.
read more on our previous report:Pakistan Ex-PM, Imran Khan Sentenced To 10 years Jail
AFP
