Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 14 years in jail over a corruption case, within the newest of a sequence of costs laid in opposition to him.
It’s the longest legitimate jail sentence the cricket star-turned-politician, who has been detained since August 2023, has acquired.
He has confronted costs in over 100 instances, starting from leaking state secrets and techniques to promoting state items – all of which he has decried as politically motivated.
The newest case has been described by Pakistani authorities as the biggest the nation has seen, although the nation has seen enormous monetary scandals up to now, a few of which concerned former leaders.
Khan and his spouse Bushra Bibi have been accused of receiving a parcel of land as a bribe from an actual property tycoon by way of the Al-Qadir Belief, which the couple had arrange whereas he was in workplace.
In trade, investigators mentioned, Khan used £190m ($232m) repatriated by the UK’s Nationwide Crime Company to pay the tycoon’s courtroom fines.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) get together argued that the land was donated to the belief for a non secular training centre and was not used for Khan’s private acquire.
In a submit on X, PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan mentioned that the previous prime minister “has finished no fallacious” and that this was a “politically motivated unfair trial”.
“However [Imran Khan] won’t give in, he won’t quit, he won’t break,” he wrote.
Friday’s verdict comes after a number of delays as Khan’s get together held talks with the federal government.
After his conviction on Friday, Khan instructed reporters within the courtroom that he would “neither make any deal nor search any aid.”
Khan’s jail sentence of 14 years is the utmost that could possibly be given within the case. He has additionally been fined greater than £4,000.
His spouse has been sentenced to seven years and fined greater than £2,000. Bibi, who has been out on bail since final October, was taken into custody in courtroom after her sentence was introduced.
In 2023, Khan was sentenced to 3 years in jail for not declaring cash earned from promoting items he had acquired whereas in workplace.
Final 12 months, Khan acquired a 14-year jail sentence over the promoting of state items, and another 10 years for leaking state secrets and techniques. Each these sentences have been suspended months later.
Regardless of being in jail and barred from holding public workplace, Khan nonetheless looms large over Pakistan’s political scene. Final 12 months’s election noticed candidates backed by Imran Khan winning the most number of seats out of all of the events.
Khan’s prosecution has triggered large-scale protests by his supporters – which have been met with a crackdown from authorities. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested and lots of injured in clashes with the police.
