A Pakistan court jailed Imran Khan for 10 years on Tuesday for what it deemed leaking state secrets, the harshest sentence the popular former prime minister and cricket superstar has received and announced just days before a general election.
The special court found Khan, 71, guilty of making public the contents of a secret cable sent by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington to the government in Islamabad, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said.
Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was also sentenced to 10 years in the same case.
Khan had earlier been sentenced to three years jail in a disputed corruption case in August, which ruled him out of the public spotlight ahead of the February 8 election.
“You have to take revenge for every injustice with your vote on February 8,” Khan said in a statement addressed to the electorate that was posted on his X profile.
“Tell them that we are not sheep that can be driven with a stick.”
The court is likely to issue a written verdict within a day or two. Khan’s PTI party said it would challenge the ruling. “We don’t accept this illegal decision,” Khan’s lawyer, Naeem Panjutha, posted on social media platform X.
The PTI has not called for protests or demonstrations before the election. A bomb in Pakistan’s Balochistan region killed three PTI members on Tuesday, the party said, hours after Khan was sentenced. There were no details of who was responsible.
Khan aide Zulfikar Bukhari told Reuters that the legal team was given no chance to represent Khan or cross examine witnesses. The proceedings were carried out in maximum security Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.
Another of Khan’s lawyers, Ali Zafar, told ARY television that given the circumstances of the trial and sentencing, the chances of the case being quashed on appeal were “100%”.
Bukhari called the conviction an attempt to weaken support for Khan. “People will now make sure they come out and vote in larger numbers,” he told Reuters.
His legal team was hoping to get him released from jail, where he has been since August last year, but the latest conviction means that is unlikely even as the charges are contested in a higher court.
PTI lawyers said they were ousted from the proceedings, denying their leaders fair representation.
“This is unconstitutional, this is against the principles of natural justice,” barrister Salman Safdar told AFP.
Khan’s sentencing just before the polls will “raise questions about the election’s credibility”, said Mazhar Abbas, a Karachi-based analyst.
About 127mn Pakistanis are eligible to vote in nine days, with Khan and PTI at the centre of debate despite being squeezed out of the limelight.
“This is a murder of justice,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a human rights activist and political analyst. “But his popularity among the people will grow in leaps and bounds as his sympathisers will increase.”
When Khan was first arrested in May last year, riots broke out in cities across the country. But his street power was killed by a subsequent military crackdown which saw thousands of supporters detained – 100 of whom are facing closed-door military trials – and dozens of senior leaders forced underground.
In Khan’s northwestern power base province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa voters remained bullish about his prospects at the ballot box.
“Imposing a sentence will not
affect Imran Khan and his party,” predicted 33-year-old welder Inayatullah Khan in Peshawar city. “If he were in a coffin instead of jail, I would still vote for him.”
Tuesday’s sentence “will only prompt voters to express their anger on the ballot paper”, added 37-year-old pharmaceutical worker Alif Rahman.
Pakistan’s recovery from an economic crisis depends on political stability. The election comes as Pakistan is navigating a tricky recovery path under a $3bn International Monetary Fund bailout that helped it narrowly avert a sovereign default last year.
Khan has been fighting dozens of cases since he was ousted from power in a controversial parliamentary vote of no-confidence in 2022.
Khan says the secret cable mentioned in the case was proof of a conspiracy by the Pakistani military and the US government to topple his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Khan has previously said the contents of the cable appeared in the media from other sources.
Khan’s PTI suffered a major setback this month when in a shocking move the Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission’s decision to strip the party of its traditional election symbol, the cricket bat.
His candidates are now contesting as independents, many of them on the run amid a brutal crackdown backed by the military. Khan’s media team posted a message from the jailed leader on X ahead of the verdict.
“These people want to provoke you by giving me a harsh sentence in this case so that you go out on the streets and protest, then add unknown people to the crowd and then do another false flag operation,” the post said.
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.
Khan urged his supporters to vote for candidates backed by him. “This is your war and this is your test that you have to take revenge for every injustice by your vote on February 8 while remaining peaceful,” the post on X said.
In a nation where literacy lags, icons are vital for identifying candidates on ballot papers and the Supreme Court injunction has effectively forced PTI hopefuls to run as independents.
When state media reported Khan’s on Tuesday conviction they did not use his name, obeying strict censorship measures that have alarmed rights monitors.
Nawaz Sharif — head of one of the two dynastic parties that have historically helmed Pakistan — has returned from self-imposed exile and seen his myriad convictions dissolve in the courts in a matter of days. Analysts say it is a sign the three-time former prime minister is the favoured candidate of the military, which has directly ruled Pakistan for roughly half of its history.