Imran Khan, the founder of Pakistan Tehree-e-Insaf (PTI) and former Prime Minister Friday, challenged his convictions in three cases.
The incarcerated leader approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to contest his convictions in the cipher and Toshakhana cases while filing a plea against the illegal Nikkah case in the session court.
PTI’s senior counsel, Sardar Latif Khosa, confirmed to journalists outside the IHC that the appeals against the convictions have been filed.
Earlier reports had suggested that Salman Safdar, another PTI counsel, had drafted appeals against the convictions awarded in the cipher, Toshakhana, and Iddat cases before the 2024 general elections.
Three Convictions:Â
On January 30, Imran Khan and his close aide, former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, were sentenced to 10 years in jail in the cipher case related to the leaking of state secrets. The special court, set up at a prison in Rawalpindi, had announced the sentence in the cipher case, which pertained to a diplomatic cable that Imran Khan claimed proved his allegation that his removal from power in 2022 was a US conspiracy.
On January 31, an anti-graft court had sentenced Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Khan to 14 years each on charges of illegally selling state gifts. The sentence in the Toshakhana case also included a 10-year disqualification from holding public office. Bushra Khan, commonly known as Bushra Bibi, had initially been allowed by authorities to serve her sentence at Imran Khan’s Islamabad hilltop mansion at Banigala. Later, she moved the court to undergo her sentence in prison rather than at the Banigala residence, which the authorities had turned into a sub-jail.
The third conviction in merely one week came in the Iddat case. On February 3, a court in Islamabad sentenced the PTI leader and his spouse, Bushra Bibi, to seven years in jail, along with a Rs0.5 million fine each, for “contracting marriage during the ‘Iddat’ (period of waiting)” of the former first lady.
