“The court accepted our request, which amounts to suspending” the sentence which had resulted in the ineligibility for five years of Imran Khan, reported, Tuesday, August 29, to Agence France-Presse (AFP) his lawyer, Gohar Khan. An Islamabad court on Tuesday suspended the former Pakistani prime minister’s three-year prison sentence for corruption and ordered his release on bail. Uncertainties remain, however, about the immediacy of the latter, according to one of Mr. Khan’s lawyers.
Even if it will be retried in due course, the judgment will allow Imran Khan, aged 70, to stand in the next legislative elections. He denied the charges, insisting he had not broken any rules. “Imran Khan has the right to lead his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf party again [Mouvement du Pakistan pour la justice] after today’s court order,” Babar Awan, another lawyer for Mr Khan, told reporters after the decision was announced.
Gohar Khan expressed fears that the former prime minister, who is being prosecuted in more than two hundred cases, will be immediately arrested again. “We have submitted a separate petition to the court asking him to issue a decision prohibiting the authorities from arresting him in any other case”he added. “If the authorities arrest him again (…)it will be against his legal rights”he insisted.
Mr. Khan’s lawyers announced on Tuesday that they would immediately go to the prison in the city of Attock, about 60 kilometers from the capital Islamabad, where he is being held. But Pakistani political commentator Omar Quraishi told AFP that he « rest[ait] to see if the former prime minister will be[it] released and if he[était]When “because of the many files with which it is confronted.
Imran Khan, ousted from power by a motion of no confidence in April 2022, was sentenced on August 5 to three years in prison for corruption. He was immediately arrested and transferred to Attock prison.
The Election Commission of Pakistan had excluded him a few days later for this reason from any participation in electoral polls for five years. Under Pakistani laws, no convicted person can lead a party, stand for election or hold public office.
Since his ousting, Mr Khan has said his removal was the result of a conspiracy by the United States, his successor Shehbaz Sharif and the Pakistani military – charges they all deny. Mr. Sharif resigned this month after the end of his parliamentary term. Meanwhile, Pakistan faces a deepening economic and political crisis.