Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his close aide Shah Mahmood Qureshi have been sentenced to ten years in prison in the Cipher case, according to Pakistani media. Judge Abul Hasnat Zulqernain of the Official Secrets Act special court, who presided over the case, pronounced the verdict after hearing evidence at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) chief and his assistant were charged in the Cipher case by the special court, which was constituted under the Official Secrets Act 2023 after the Islamabad High Court (IHC) pronounced their jail trial null and void.
A no-confidence vote forced Khan to resign as prime minister in April 2022
Imran and Qureshi were sentenced to jail just over a month after the Supreme Court granted them bail in the case involving Rs 1 million in surety bonds. A few days later, Justice Miangul Hasan Aurangzeb halted the special court’s proceedings until January 11, citing “legal errors” in the case. Despite several indictments and now a jail sentence, both have professed innocence and said that “powerful people” behind the Cipher case made them the scapegoat. Imran said that the trial was nothing more than a “joke” because both the prosecution and defence teams belonged to the government.
The decision comes just before the February 8 national elections, in which Imran’s party will face a heavily militarized state machinery that has removed the PTI’s electoral emblem, the ‘bat’. Imran Khan was accused of violating the Official Secrets Act by disclosing a classified diplomatic cable known as the Cipher. This was sent by Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington in March 2022. Khan allegedly lost custody of the diplomatic cable later. Both Khan and Qureshi claimed that the cable contained a threat from the US to topple Pakistan’s PTI government, which was then in power. A no-confidence vote forced Khan to resign as prime minister in April 2022. Over 150 cases have been filed against him since he was removed from his position as premier. Notably, the Cipher case marks Imran’s second conviction, following his three-year prison sentence in the Toshakhana case in August of last year.