File photo
Islamabad:
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife were sentenced to 14 years in prison on Wednesday after being found guilty of corruption in a case involving receiving gifts while he was prime minister.
The verdict comes a week before national elections and a day after Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets.
“Another sad day in the history of our judicial system, which is being dismantled,” a spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party told the media.
It is unclear whether Khan’s sentences will be served consecutively or concurrently following a trial inside the prison, where he has been held most of the time since his arrest in August.
But Khan’s lawyer Salman Safdar confirmed to AFP that he was sentenced alongside his wife Bushra Bibi, who has been on remand throughout the trial.
“Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi have been sentenced. Bushra Bibi has not been arrested yet,” Safdar said.
The two married in 2018, a few months after Khan was elected prime minister.
Bibi, a faith healer whom Khan met when he sought spiritual guidance from her, is rarely seen in public.
About 127 million Pakistanis are eligible to vote on election day next Thursday, with Khan and the PTI still at the center of the debate despite being squeezed out of the spotlight.
The vote has been marred by accusations of fraud, Khan is barred from previous corruption convictions and his party has faced a massive crackdown.
Since being ousted from power in 2022, Khan has been buried by court cases that he claims were triggered by an attempt to prevent him from returning to the presidency after a campaign against Pakistan’s military kingmakers.
Khan blames the powerful military – with whom he governed for much of his term – of orchestrating his ouster in a U.S.-backed plot.
When Khan was first arrested in May last year, riots broke out across the country.
But his street power has been stifled by a military crackdown that has seen thousands of supporters detained, 100 of whom face closed-door military trials, and dozens of senior leaders driven underground.
“You must avenge every injustice by voting on February 8,” Khan said in a statement posted on his X profile in response to his 10-year sentence on Tuesday.
“Tell them we are not sheep to be driven away with a stick.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
