Pakistan | Ex-PM Imran Khan accused of leaking classified documents

(Rawalpindi) Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, imprisoned since August, faces a long prison sentence after being charged Monday with disclosing classified documents, while the Supreme Court banned the trials of his supporters before military courts.

“He was charged today and the charge sheet was read out in his presence,” prosecutor Shah Khawar of the Federal Investigation Agency said outside Adiala prison in the southern city of Rawalpindi. from the capital Islamabad, where Mr Khan, 71, is being held.

The case concerns a diplomatic cable from Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, which Mr. Khan presented as evidence of a U.S. plot against him backed by the Pakistani military. The United States and the Pakistani military have denied the claim.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former foreign minister and number two in the party founded by Mr. Khan, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), was also charged in this case.

According to Mr. Khan’s lawyers, this charge is punishable by up to 14 years in prison, or, in the most extreme circumstances, the death penalty.

The Supreme Court then brought better news to Mr Khan by ruling that his supporters accused of taking part in the violence linked to his previous arrest in May could not be tried in military courts.

“According to the Supreme Court’s verdict, none of the cases that were tried in military courts can continue. They can only be dealt with in civil courts,” Aitzaz Ahsan, a PTI lawyer, told reporters outside the Supreme Court.

“Today’s verdict [lundi] is highly important and it will help strengthen the Constitution, law and civil institutions of this country,” he added.

More than 100 people were to be tried in military courts for their alleged involvement in violent protests targeting the military that followed Mr. Khan’s arrest on corruption charges on May 9.

In camera procedure

MM. Khan and Qureshi were charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act in proceedings “conducted on court premises, without public or media access”, a spokesperson said. – PTI spokesperson.

“We will challenge this decision,” Mr. Khan’s lawyer, Umar Khan Niazi, told reporters. “The public is behind Imran Khan. »

Imran Khan, a former cricket star who came to power in 2018 and was removed by a motion of no confidence in April 2022, enjoys immense popular support in Pakistan.

But his campaign of distrust against the powerful establishment military was followed by a severe backlash.

Thousands of PTI supporters were arrested, and almost all of the leaders were forced underground. Many of them subsequently abandoned the party.

“He is the subject of legal proceedings, but the intention of the regime is very clear: it does not want to give him any possibility of getting away with it, whether the accusations are real or invented,” declared to AFP the political analyst Rasul Bakhsh Rais.

More than 200 cases

Mr. Khan has been prosecuted in more than 200 cases since he was ousted from power by a motion of no confidence in April 2022. He considers these prosecutions to be politically motivated.

He accuses the army, which helped him come to power in 2018 but whose support he has since lost according to analysts, of seeking to prevent him from regaining leadership of the country.

At the end of August, an Islamabad court suspended a three-year prison sentence for corruption, which had led to his incarceration and his ineligibility for the next elections. But Mr Khan remains in custody over the leaked documents affair.

Pakistan is currently led by a caretaker government. Elections, postponed for several months, should in principle take place in January 2024.

As the election approaches, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan’s main political opponent, returned to Islamabad on Saturday after four years of self-imposed exile in London.

He remains under a seven-year prison sentence for corruption dating from 2018, a sentence he has only partially served.

A court in Islamabad had granted him bail two days earlier, which saved him from being arrested on his return.

The fate of Pakistani leaders depends on their relations with the army, and Pakistani courts are often used to bog political leaders in endless proceedings, intended, according to human rights defenders, to stifle any dissent.