Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s detention was extended for two weeks on Wednesday in proceedings over the release of a classified document, a day after his three-year prison sentence for corruption in a separate case was suspended .
Mr Khan, a hugely popular former cricketer-turned-politician, has been prosecuted in more than 200 cases since he was ousted from power by a no-confidence motion in April 2022. He considers them are motivated by political considerations aimed at preventing him from representing himself.
“Imran Khan’s detention (…) has been extended for 14 days,” one of his lawyers, Salman Safdar, told AFP outside Attock prison, about 60 kilometers from the capital. , where he has been detained since August 5.
On Tuesday, an Islamabad court suspended the three-year prison sentence for corruption that led to his incarceration and ineligibility for the upcoming elections, and ordered his release on bail.
But despite this decision, Mr. Khan was not released, because he had previously been imprisoned in the case for which he appeared on Wednesday, without his lawyers having been informed.
The brief hearing was held inside Attock prison and behind closed doors, under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act.
Imran Khan, 70, is accused of leaking the content of a diplomatic cable from the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and exploiting it politically.
He claimed that the message proved that the United States had hatched a conspiracy to oust him from power. The accusation had been considered fanciful by Washington and rejected by the Pakistani army.
Salman Safdar said the legislation used in this case was usually used for military trials and said the decision to try Mr Khan behind closed doors was “condemnable and disturbing”.
“It is a shameless and flagrant violation of his fundamental rights,” he added. “He is not granted the right to a free trial.”
The deputy chairman of Mr Khan’s party, former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, was taken into custody in the same case.
Mr. Khan was imprisoned in this case almost two weeks ago, but the information was not known until after the hearing on Tuesday, according to his lawyers. One of them, Muhammad Shoaib Shaheen, had denounced Tuesday to AFP “a manipulation of justice”.
His sentence to three years in prison had been pronounced by a court which had found him guilty of having received, when he was in power, gifts whose value he had underestimated before reselling them at a high price.
The Electoral Commission had excluded him a few days later for this reason from any participation in electoral polls for five years.
Parliament was dissolved on August 9 and an interim government, led by technocrats, was put in charge of supervising the next elections, supposed to take place within 90 days according to the Constitution.
But the incumbent government has hinted that the poll could be postponed as the electoral commission needs time to redraw the boundaries of the electoral districts after the publication of data from the last census carried out in May.
08/30/2023 11:11:03 – Attock (Pakistan) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP