Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for the unauthorized disclosure of state secrets.
Imran Khan, the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, along with Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi, received the 10-year jail term in the cipher case following a ruling by a special court in Pakistan on Tuesday.
The cipher case revolves around a diplomatic cable that allegedly went missing from Khan's possession. Khan had consistently asserted, both before and after facing a no-confidence motion last year, that the cipher implicated a plot to oust him from the prime minister's office.
Ten witnesses were summoned to provide testimonies against Khan and Qureshi in this case. They were brought forth by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which had filed charges against Khan and Qureshi in August for purportedly violating the country's laws on secrecy by disclosing information from official diplomatic communications, as per PTI reports.
In December, Pakistan's Supreme Court granted post-arrest bails to Khan and Qureshi. While Imran remained in custody in connection with other cases, Qureshi's expected release was postponed after he reportedly faced mistreatment and was rearrested in a new case on May 9, according to Dawn.
Khan was removed from the position of Prime Minister of Pakistan following a vote of no-confidence in April 2022. He was incarcerated on August 5, 2023, subsequent to an Islamabad court sentencing him to three years in jail in the Toshakhana case. He was confined in the Attock District Jail to serve his prison term.
Subsequently, his sentence was temporarily suspended by the Islamabad High Court, only for him to be arrested again in connection with the cipher case, where he remained in the Attock jail on judicial remand.
