Ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan, wife sentenced to 17 years in corruption case

Khan and his woman person denied accusations that they misrepresented the worth of authorities gifts, including jewellery, and profited from them.

Pakistan’s erstwhile Prime Minister Imran Khan and his woman Bushra Bibi person been sentenced to 17 years successful situation aft a Pakistani tribunal recovered them blameworthy of illegally retaining and selling invaluable authorities gifts.

The sentence, handed down connected Saturday, capped a years-long saga that saw the duo accused of selling assorted gifts – including jewellery from the Saudi Arabian authorities – astatine acold beneath marketplace value. They person denied each charges.

In bid to support gifts from overseas dignitaries, Pakistani instrumentality requires officials to acquisition them astatine marketplace worth and to state profits from immoderate sales.

But prosecutors claimed that the mates profited from the items aft purchasing them astatine an artificially debased terms of $10,000, compared with their marketplace complaint of $285,521.

Khan’s supporters were speedy to denounce the ruling, with his spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari saying that “criminal liability was imposed without impervious of intent, gain, oregon loss, relying alternatively connected a retrospective reinterpretation of rules”.

His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, wrote connected societal media that the proceedings were a “sham” and criticised planetary media sum of the case.

The 73-year-old erstwhile person served arsenic Pakistan’s premier curate from 2018 until April 2022, erstwhile helium was ousted successful a no-confidence vote.

He was imprisoned starting successful August 2023 connected assorted charges of corruption and revealing authorities secrets, each of which helium has denied and claimed to beryllium politically motivated. He has been acquitted of immoderate charges.

An internationally celebrated cricket subordinate successful the heyday of his sporting career, Khan remains fashionable successful Pakistan, with his imprisonment starring to protests passim the past 2 years.

The erstwhile person is present confined to a situation successful the metropolis of Rawalpindi and “kept wrong each the time”, his sister, Uzma Khanum, told journalists earlier this month.

Khanum, a doc who was the archetypal household subordinate allowed to sojourn Khan successful weeks, described him arsenic “very angry” astir the isolation, saying that helium considered the “mental torture” of imprisonment to beryllium “worse than carnal abuse”.