Pakistan Court Indicts Imran Khan in State Secrets Case

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Facts

  • Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his close aid, former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, were charged on Wednesday with leaking state secrets — another setback for the jailed politician seeking to run in Pakistan's February general election. 1
  • Both pleaded not guilty to the charges, reportedly read out loudly in the Adiala jail courtroom, of making public a classified cable that Pakistan's ambassador to Washington had sent to Islamabad in 2022. 2
  • Khan's lawyer accused the court of a lack of transparency and an unfair trial and objected to the proceedings as "no charge was framed before us nor signed by the accused." Legal experts said a guilty verdict could result in up to 14 years in prison or death. 2
  • Khan and Qureshi were charged in the same case in October but the Islamabad High Court, on procedural grounds, ruled against a prison trial. On Dec. 4, a special court indicted them both again, making way for a trial to proceed while the defendants are imprisoned.3
  • Khan alleges that the classified cable proves a US role in the Pakistan military's overthrow of his government in 2022 following his return from a Moscow visit a day before Russia invaded Ukraine. The US and the Pakistani military have rejected these allegations. 4
  • Khan was removed from office by a parliamentary confidence vote. He was disqualified from running for public office for five years and is serving a three-year prison sentence after he was convicted of failing to disclose proceeds from the sale of state gifts. 5

Sources: 1Al Jazeera, 2Voice of America, 3The Indian Express, 4The Hindu, and 5Yahoo News.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by The International News. It's encouraging for the rule of law in Pakistan that the case against Imran Khan is now being retried. The former prime minister, who claims to be a victim of a US conspiracy, exploited an unoffensive secret cable to fabricate a narrative against the opposition parties and state institutions. By making the document public — and not returning it — Khan indulged in political opportunism with the help of Shah Mahmood Qureshi, willfully damaging US-Pakistan relations and violating the country's laws. It's high time that power-hungry Khan is removed from political life.
  • Narrative B, as provided by The Express Tribune. The charges against Khan and Qureshi are a farce and politically motivated to prevent the former Prime Minister, who is very popular, from running for office. This explains the haste and lack of transparency in proceedings earlier declared unconstitutional by the Islamabad High Court. Instead of Khan, it should be those who conspired to topple him in 2022 who must stand trial. There is a reason the explicit secret cable must be withheld from the indicted duo — if Khan is convicted, Pakistan is in for troubled times just before the elections.
  • Nerd narrative, as provided by Metaculus. There is an 82% chance of an India-Pakistan armed conflict leading to at least 100 deaths before 2050, according to the Metaculus prediction community.