A high court in Pakistan overturned jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s (pic) conviction on charges of leaking state secrets, his lawyer and his party said, but Imran will remain in prison for now due to a conviction in another case.
Imran, 71, had been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a lower court on charges of making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington in 2022.
He has been in jail since August last year.
He had challenged the conviction in Islamabad High Court, which said in an order on Monday that, an “instant appeal is allowed”, adding Imran was acquitted of the charges.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Imran’s foreign minister during his tenure from 2018-2022, was also acquitted of the charges, in what is a major victory for the jailed leader.
“Thank God, the sentence is overturned,” a spokesman for legal affairs from Imran’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Naeem Panjutha, said in a post on X shortly after the Islamabad High Court announced its decision.
Imran has said the classified cable was proof of a conspiracy by the Pakistan military and US government to topple his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington and Pakistan’s military deny that accusation.
The state secrets case was one of four in which Imran was convicted just ahead of Pakistan’s national election in February. In two other of those cases the sentences have since been suspended while he appeals.
But despite Monday’s acquittal, Imrn, a former cricket star, will remain in prison serving a seven-year sentence over another case relating to his marriage to his third wife, Bushra Khan, also known as Bushra Bibi, which contravened Islamic traditions.
A ruling on the couple’s appeal against the sentence was postponed last week and the proceedings transferred to another court after a judge recused himself following an accusation of bias made by Bibi’s former husband, according to Imran’s lawyers.
“We will celebrate this victory,” another one of his lawyers, Ali Zafar, said in a TV interview, adding that the other cases faced by Imran would result in acquittals too.
“It’s a huge political and legal victory,” journalist and political analyst Mazhar Abbas told Reuters, but cautioned that it would be premature to say that Imran would be released anytime soon.
Imran is also named as an accused in several other cases, including charges of inciting violence against the state. — Reuters
