Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and ex-Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi were sentenced to ten years in prison on Tuesday for leaking state secrets in the cipher case, according to local media.
The sentence was imposed by a special court established under the Official Secrets Act, according to the Pakistani daily Dawn.
Naeem Panjutha, Khan's lawyer, went to social media to challenge the judgement. “We don’t accept this illegal decision,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The court's judgement comes nine days before the election, in which Khan's Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) party is running without an official symbol and amid a state-wide crackdown. Pakistan's elections are scheduled for Thursday, February 8, Indian Express reported.
Khan, 71, and Qureshi, 67, are reportedly held at Rawalpindi's high-security Adiala jail. They were imprisoned in a case alleging that they broke the Official Secrets Act by exposing the contents of a secret diplomatic cable — known as the cipher — sent by Pakistan's embassy in Washington in March last year. The cipher had purportedly disappeared from Khan's custody. The duo claimed that the communication contained a threat from the United States to overthrow the government.
Terming the trial nothing less than a 'joke', the cricketer-turned-politician said, “The prosecution team and defence counsels both belong to the government.”
In a post on X, he had compared it to a “fixed match.” This is not a trial but a fixed match whose outcome was predetermined by the characters and planners of the London Plan and their seals. That is why I already know the decision of this case,” he wrote.
Khan was removed from his position as Prime Minister in April 2022 following a vote of no confidence. More than 150 lawsuits have been filed against him since his removal from power.