Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan spent the evening at a high-security jail after a court docket handed him a three-year jail sentence for corruption, a growth that would finish his future in politics.
The court docket dominated Saturday that Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022 however stays the nation’s main opposition determine, had hid property after promoting state presents.
The jail sentence may bar him from politics beneath a legislation that prohibits individuals with a felony conviction from holding or working for public workplace. He may additionally lose the chairmanship of the celebration he based, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI.
It’s the second time this yr that Khan has been detained, becoming a member of different former Pakistani prime ministers who had been arrested and seen army interventions all through the nation’s political historical past.
But his present residence on the Attock jail is a far cry from his custodial circumstances in May when he was taken to a well-appointed guesthouse on a police compound in Islamabad beneath a Supreme Court order. He was then allowed guests and conferences with celebration colleagues.
Attock jail, in japanese Punjab province, is infamous for its harsh circumstances and its inmates embody convicted militants.
Authorities have additional tightened safety across the jail, which already has armed guards in watchtowers, by erecting boundaries and blocking roads to maintain individuals away. They have additionally instructed locals to not enable media onto their roofs to cease images and movies from leaking.
PTI lawyer Shoaib Shaheen informed The Associated Press that police on the jail refused entry to a authorized group who went to see Khan. He mentioned the celebration will file an enchantment as there are “plenty of loopholes in the verdict.”
Critics say efforts to place Khan behind bars are politically motivated and have intensified forward of elections as a consequence of be held later this yr.
They argue that Khan’s recognition and a big assist base, mixed along with his capacity to mobilize huge crowds, pose a risk to the ruling coalition and its backers in Pakistan’s highly effective army that has been the ultimate arbiter of the nation’s politics since independence from Britain in 1947.
In May, Khan’s arrest on corruption costs triggered a wave of violent protests that swept the nation. Pakistan’s Supreme Court days later ordered his launch, saying his arrest was unlawful.