Ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan gets 10-year prison sentence for disclosing state secrets

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to a 10-year prison term for disclosing state secrets.

The case involves allegations that Khan exposed the contents of a secret cable sent by the US ambassador to the Pakistani government.

Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) reported that former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Khan were each sentenced to 10 years in prison by a special court.

The party stated that they would challenge the decision and referred to it as a “sham case.”

Naeem Panjutha, Khan’s Attorney, has expressed his disapproval of the illegal decision made by the court on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The former cricket star faces second conviction in recent months, following a three-year sentence in a corruption case.

The suspended jail term for a corruption conviction has already disqualified him from the upcoming general elections in the country.

Khan’s legal team aims to release him from jail, where he has been incarcerated since August last year, despite being ruled out of the election.

Meanwhile, the recent conviction indicates that the charges are unlikely to be resolved in a higher court.

Khan has been facing numerous legal challenges since his ousting in 2022 due to a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

Khan claims the cable was evidence of a 2022 conspiracy by the Pakistani military and US government to overthrow his government, following his visit to Moscow before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Accordingly, Washington and the Pakistan military have refuted the allegations.

The former prime minister has claimed that the contents of the cable were sourced from other media sources.