A court in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on October 23 indicted former Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in a case relating to their alleged leaking of secret documents.
Khan, who is the leader of the Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) party, and Qureshi, who is PTI’s deputy leader, both pleaded not guilty.
The charge stems from Khan’s waving of a confidential diplomatic document at a public rally following his ouster in a no-confidence vote in April last year.
At the time, Khan claimed that the document, referred to as “Cipher,” was proof that his ouster had been orchestrated by Pakistan’s powerful military in coordination with the United States, both of whom have rejected the accusations.
The document has not been made public, but it is apparently a diplomatic cable communication between Islamabad’s embassy in Washington and the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.
Both Khan and Qureshi are currently in detention.
A former cricket superstar, Khan, 71, still enjoys huge popularity in Pakistan, despite facing multiple legal challenges.
He was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison in August in a graft case involving gifts received while in office. An appeals court suspended the sentence, but Khan was then rearrested in the “Cipher” case.
Currently, Khan cannot run in elections scheduled for January unless the graft conviction is annulled and he is exonerated in the “Cipher” case, too.
The trial is scheduled to start on October 27 behind closed doors at the Adiyala prison in Rawalpindi, where Khan is currently incarcerated.
Lawyers say that, if found guilty, both he and Kureshi risk at least 14 years in prison or even the death penalty.
On October 21, three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Khan’s longtime rival, returned to Pakistan from four years of self-imposed exile and launched the election campaign of his Pakistan Muslim League party at a huge rally in the eastern city of Lahore.
Sharif stepped down in 2017 after being sentenced to 14 years in prison for graft; he left for London in 2019 to seek medical treatment.
Upon his conviction in 2017, Sharif was banned for life from running in elections. But the government led by his brother, Shebhaz Sharif, who was prime minister from April 2022 until August, amended the legislation, limiting the disqualification period to five years.
The Muslim League and Khan’s PTI are seen as the main competitors in the upcoming elections.
Pakistan, a nation of 241 million people, is grappling with a severe economic crisis that has seen living standards plunge rapidly.