Islamabad:

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday, less than two weeks before the country votes in a general election that has kept his party out of the running.
Khan’s sentencing came inside Adiala jail, where he has spent much of his time since his arrest in August and was buried under a mountain of court cases that he said were aimed at preventing him from returning to Office and well planned.

The same verdict also applies to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) deputy chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who served as foreign minister under Khan.

“Former Prime Minister Imran Khan and PKR deputy chairman Qureshi were both sentenced to 10 years in prison,” a party spokesman told AFP.

State media also reported the convictions and sentences.

The cases against both men relate to allegations that they leaked classified state documents.

Khan served as prime minister from 2018 to 2022, when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote after losing the support of the country’s military kingmakers.

As opposition leader, he launched an unprecedented campaign of defiance against senior leaders, accusing them of a U.S.-backed plot to oust him and orchestrating an assassination attempt on his life.

Khan was briefly arrested last May and Islamabad used the resulting unrest to justify a sweeping crackdown on the PTI, with many senior leaders defecting or going underground.

“This is a murder of justice,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a human rights activist and political analyst.

“But his popularity among the people will grow by leaps and bounds, and his sympathizers will grow because of this gross injustice.”

In the run-up to the elections, the PTI was largely absent from the public sphere.

The party has been stripped of its electoral symbol and candidates are forced to run in their personal capacity.

Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif, the leader of one of the dynastic parties that historically ruled Pakistan, returned from self-imposed exile and saw his numerous convictions unraveled in court.

Analysts said this showed the three-time former prime minister was the favored candidate by the brass, who have directly ruled Pakistan for much of its history.

Under Pakistan’s constitution, elections must be held within 90 days of the dissolution of parliament – which took place five months ago in August.

The Electoral Commission blamed the delay on the need to redraw constituency boundaries following the new census in 2023.

During this period, Pakistan was ruled by a caretaker government, which the military establishment considered flexible.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)