A Pakistani court on Tuesday sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets, the former prime minister’s media team said, marking his second conviction in recent months just 10 days before the country’s general elections. He announced that he had received it.
The case concerns allegations that Mr. Khan published the contents of a confidential cable sent from the country’s ambassador in Washington to the Islamabad government.
Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), announced that both Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi were each sentenced to 10 years in prison by a special court.
The party has challenged the decision, calling it a “sham lawsuit”.
“We do not accept this illegal decision,” Khan’s lawyer Naeem Panjuta posted on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
It is the embattled former cricket star’s second conviction in recent months.
He was previously sentenced to three years in prison in a corruption case.
His sentence was suspended after he contested his corruption conviction, but he has already been excluded from next week’s national elections.
Despite being ruled out from participating in the election, Khan’s lawyers had hoped he would be released from prison, where he has been kept out of public view since August last year.
The latest conviction means it is unlikely, if ever, that the charges will be challenged in a higher court.
Khan has fought dozens of lawsuits since being ousted from power in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in 2022.
After visiting Moscow just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Khan said the cable was evidence of a conspiracy by the Pakistani military and the US government to overthrow the Pakistani government in 2022.
The US government and Pakistan’s military deny the accusations.
The former prime minister previously said the contents of the cable were published in the media from other sources.
