Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife have been sentenced to prison terms in a corruption case
A Pakistani court on Friday sentenced former prime minister Imran Khan to 14 years in prison in the country’s corruption case – a setback to initial talks between his party and the government aimed at calming political instability in the South Asian nation.
The verdict in this case was handed down by an anti-corruption court in a prison in the city of Rawalpindi, where Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023.
Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi was also found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. She was released on bail, but was detained after the sentencing, reports Geo News.
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told reporters that Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party may approach higher courts to appeal the verdict, and that the former cricket star may also file a mercy plea to Pakistan’s president.
Omar Ayub, Khan’s aide, said the party would challenge the verdict in higher courts.
Khan, 72, was indicted on allegations that he and his wife were gifted land by a property developer during his tenure as prime minister from 2018 to 2022 in exchange for illegal favors.
Khan and Bibi have pleaded not guilty.
A dispute over the purchase of land
The case is linked to the Al-Qadir Trust, a non-governmental welfare body the couple founded while Khan was in office.
Prosecutors say the trust was a front for Khan to illegally obtain land from a real estate developer. They said he was given 24 acres near Islamabad and another large plot near his villa on a hill in the capital.
Khan’s says the land was not for personal gain, but for a spiritual and educational institution set up by the former prime minister.
“While we await a detailed decision, it is important to note that Al-Qadir Trust’s case against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi has no solid foundation and will fail,” the PTI’s foreign media wing said in a statement.
The announcement of the verdict was postponed three times, most recently on Monday, amid reconciliation talks between the PTI and the government. The two sides have been at loggerheads since Khan was removed from office in 2022.
The ruling is the biggest setback for Khan and his party since a surprisingly strong showing in the 2024 general election, when PTI candidates — who were forced to run as independents — won the most seats but failed to get the majority needed to form a government.
In jail since August 2023, Khan faces dozens of cases ranging from bribery and abuse of power charges to inciting violence against the state after he was removed from office in a parliamentary confidence vote in April 2022.
Khan, who led Pakistan to the 1992 Cricket World Cup, has either been acquitted or had his sentences suspended in most cases, except in this case and another on charges of inciting fans to rampage through military facilities to protest his arrest on 9 May, 2023.
He has denied any wrongdoing in all the cases against him, telling Reuters that the military – which has ruled Pakistan for much of its history since independence in 1947 – and its intelligence agency are trying to destroy him and his political party.
His supporters have led several violent protest rallies since the May 9 incidents.
Khan’s cases were tried in prison for security reasons.
An increasingly prominent role for Bushra
Khan and his followers usually refer to his wife as Bushra Bibi or Bushra Begum, titles denoting respect in the Urdu language.
Born Bushra Riaz Watto, she changed her name to Khan after they married in 2018 – his third marriage and her second.
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She usually appears in public with her face covered by a veil, wearing a flowing simple black or white abaya or dress.
Bushra, who is in her late 40s, attracted global headlines when she entered the capital Islamabad last year with thousands of PTI supporters breaking through heavy security barricades.
“You must all promise not to leave until Khan is with us,” Bushra said in her first speech at a public rally.
Underscoring her increasingly active role in the PTI, she insisted on holding the protest in a sensitive, central location, despite Khan’s instructions to gather on the outskirts of the capital, according to party officials.
She was released from prison in October after nine months in a case involving the illegal sale of state gifts.
