The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday suspended former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s conviction on corruption charges and overturned his three-year jail sentence, potentially paving the way for his return to politics.
The court did not seem in a hurry to actually let him out of jail, and the electoral commission did not rush to reinstate him as a legitimate candidate for office.
Khan was kicked out of office in April 2022 before the end of his term, as every one of his predecessors has been. Khan was the first to get booted with a parliamentary vote of no confidence. He immediately rejected the legitimacy of the parliamentary maneuver, blamed the United States for orchestrating a plot to get rid of him, and launched a political comeback as a fiery Islamist populist.
Khan’s march to reclaim power alienated the powerful Pakistani military, especially after Khan was arrested on corruption charges and his supporters rioted, damaging some military property in the process. Khan’s PTI party faithful repelled several attempts to arrest him, and the Pakistani Supreme Court nullified a spectacular arrest made by a paramilitary police unit in May.
Khan was arrested again in early August on corruption charges and bundled off to a gruesome high-security prison, where his party said the 70-year-old former cricket star’s health suffered. Pakistan’s electoral commission ruled that his arrest made him ineligible to run for office for five years, seemingly knocking him out of contention for the next presidential race, where polls suggested he stood a decent chance of defeating incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Policemen stand guard at the Attock prison post where Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan is being held for three years in Attock on August 6, 2023. Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was sent to jail for three years August 5 after a court in the capital found him guilty of graft, a move likely to bar him from standing in elections due later this year. (Aamir QURESHI / AFP via Getty)
A week after Khan’s arrest, a long-rumored Pakistani government document was leaked to international media that allegedly caught Biden State Department officials telling the Pakistani ambassador in March 2022 they wanted Khan out of office. Khan and his supporters felt this document vindicated their claim that he was forced out of office at the behest of the United States government.
Khan faces over a hundred criminal charges stemming from his time as prime minister, all of which he dismisses as politicized attempts to keep him from running again. The charges that finally put him in prison stemmed from the “Toshakhana case,” named after the government agency that oversees foreign gifts to Pakistani officials. Khan was accused of improperly keeping and selling expensive presents from foreigners without going through the normal procedure, in which a politician can purchase such gifts from the Toshakhana agency for fair market value when they leave office.
Khan’s PTI party celebrated the suspension of his corruption conviction on Tuesday as a major court victory and demanded both his immediate release, and his reinstatement as a political candidate. Police officials said they planned to keep him in custody for at least 14 days. A judge is scheduled to rule tomorrow on whether he can be immediately tried and jailed again on another charge: leaking the secret cable that purportedly caught Biden State Department officials asking for his ouster.
“Imran Khan is again entitled to lead his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party after today’s court order,” Khan’s lawyer Babar Awan declared on Tuesday.
PTI leaders said they were “happy, relieved,” and “a little surprised” that his sentence was overturned.
“If an attempt is made to arrest Chairman Imran Khan in other cases after his release, it will be an attempt to push the country towards anarchy. At this time, the only way to save the country from further crises is to have clean and transparent elections as soon as possible,” warned Khan ally and former parliamentary speaker Asad Qaiser.
Zulfi Bukhari, an aide to the PTI chairman, said it was “absurd” that Khan would be kept in jail under the Official Secrets Act, a “bill that was not legally approved as a law by the president.”
“Are laws and draconian amendments in this country to target just one person or party? Or is there any use of law for the people?” Bukhari asked.
Khan’s lawyers said they were “intentionally left uninformed and kept in the dark” about the plan to keep their client in jail under the Official Secrets Act.
“This constitutes a manipulation of justice,” Khan’s legal team said.
On the other hand, Shehbaz Sharif – who remains head of his PML-N party but had to resign as prime minister in July to pave the way for elections in November – castigated the judges for “favoring” Khan and said the reversal of his corruption conviction marked a “dark chapter” in Pakistani history.
Shehbaz Sharif (R) and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (L) speak during a press conference in Islamabad on April 4, 2022. (AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images)
“Scales tilted to one side, and a justice system that undermines justice are not acceptable,” Sharif said, alluding to his discontent that his brother and predecessor as prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has not been shown the same leniency as Khan.