Pakistan’s Ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan Spends Night at High-Security Prison After Court Sentencing

ATTOCK, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan spent the night time 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 might bar him from politics below a regulation that prohibits individuals with a prison conviction from holding or operating for public workplace. He might additionally lose the chairmanship of the celebration he based, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI.

It is 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 navy interventions all through the nation’s political historical past.

However his present residence on the Attock jail is a far cry from his custodial circumstances in Could when he was taken to a well-appointed guesthouse on a police compound in Islamabad below a Supreme Court docket order. He was then allowed guests and conferences with celebration colleagues.

Attock jail, in jap Punjab province, is infamous for its harsh circumstances and its inmates embrace convicted militants.

Authorities have additional tightened safety across the jail, which already has armed guards in watchtowers, by erecting limitations and blocking roads to maintain individuals away. They’ve additionally instructed locals to not permit media onto their roofs to cease images and movies from leaking.

PTI lawyer Shoaib Shaheen instructed The Related Press that police on the jail refused entry to a authorized group who went to see Khan. He stated the celebration will file an attraction as there are “loads of loopholes within the verdict.”

Critics say efforts to place Khan behind bars are politically motivated and have intensified forward of elections because of be held later this yr.

They argue that Khan’s reputation and a big assist base, mixed together with his capacity to mobilize huge crowds, pose a menace to the ruling coalition and its backers in Pakistan’s highly effective navy that has been the ultimate arbiter of the nation’s politics since independence from Britain in 1947.

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