By The Straits Times | Created at 2025-01-17 09:15:59 | Updated at 2025-01-17 18:14:02
8 hours ago
A Pakistani court on Friday sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 14 years imprisonment and his wife Bushra Bibi to seven years in a land corruption case, his legal team said.
The verdict in the case, the largest in terms of financial wrongdoing faced by Khan, was delivered by an anti-graft court in a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Khan has been jailed since August 2023.
Here are some of the allegations against the 72-year-old former cricket star, named in dozens of cases since he was ousted from office in 2022 that have kept him behind bars for more than a year.
GRAFT ALLEGATIONS
On Friday, Khan was convicted on charges that he and his wife were gifted land by a real estate developer during his premiership from 2018 to 2022 in exchange for illegal favours.
He was first arrested in May 2023 in this case, on allegations that the couple received land worth up to 7 billion rupees ($25.12 million) as a bribe through a trust created in 2018.
His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has maintained the land was donated for charitable purposes.
Bibi was taken into custody on Friday, after being released on bail in October in another case.
STATE GIFTS
Khan was arrested in August 2023 for allegedly selling gifts worth more than 140 million rupees that he received during his premiership and which belonged in state possession.
Khan and Bibi were indicted on fresh charges in December after they were sentenced in two other versions of the case, although the sentences have been suspended. The couple has denied any wrongdoing.
ABETTING VIOLENCE
Khan faces anti-terrorism charges in connection with the violence that followed his arrest in May 2023, and in relation to which several of his supporters have already been sentenced.
He was indicted in December and is on trial.
STATE SECRETS
Khan was accused of making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan's ambassador in Washington in 2022, while he still held office.
He was acquitted in the case in June.
UNLAWFUL MARRIAGE
Khan and his wife were accused of breaking Islamic law by failing to observe the mandated waiting period between Bibi's divorce from her previous husband and their marriage in 2018 .
They were acquitted of the charges in July. REUTERS
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