Court
Pakistan’s former prime minister Khan sentenced to ten years in prison
The judiciary accuses Imran Khan of passing on confidential diplomatic information. photo
© KM Chaudary/AP/dpa
The popular ex-prime minister should be sentenced to ten years in prison. His party wants to appeal the verdict.
In Pakistan, a court has the former prime minister Imran Khan sentenced to ten years in prison. A spokesman for Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party confirmed this to the German Press Agency. The judiciary accuses the politician of passing on confidential diplomatic information.
Khan’s party colleague and former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi must now serve a ten-year prison sentence as a result of this case. The PTI wants to appeal to the Supreme Court.
At the beginning of August, the 71-year-old former cricket star was imprisoned and convicted in a separate case. A higher authority then ordered his release – but he had to remain in prison because of the investigation into the current case.
A new parliament will be elected in Pakistan on February 8th. The opposition has been massively weakened due to Khan’s imprisonment.
Time and again, prime ministers in the South Asian country with more than 240 million inhabitants are dismissed prematurely – like Khan in April 2022. The powerful military, which has held half of the country’s power since the state was founded in 1947, is considered to be crucial to the fall and rise of politicians in the nuclear-armed state Time itself ruled.