Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been sentenced to 14 years in jail for corruption.
Khan and his wife were convicted by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in a case, known as the Toshakhana reference, which has to do with selling gifts he was given in his capacity as prime minister without declaring proceeds for tax purposes.
The bureau has also imposed fine of 1.5 billion Pakistani rupees ($5.3 million) on the former leader and his wife. Khan is also barred from serving in office for 10 years as part of his punishment.
Khan was earlier handed a three-year prison sentence in August last year in a case by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for not disclosing assets based on the sale of state gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($501,000) he received when he was the prime minister from 2018 to April 2022.
The 14-year sentence comes a day after Khan was handed a 10-year sentence for leaking state secrets.
Khan, who was ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence in April 2022, is already serving a three-year jail term since August 2023 in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
However, Bushra Bibi has been allowed to serve her sentence at Khan’s Islamabad hilltop mansion, the party’s media team confirmed.
Zulfiqar Bukhari, spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said the sentencing of Khan was “yet another sad day in Pakistan’s judicial history” and questioned its legitimacy.
“Judiciary is being dismantled. A flawed decision meant to be suspended by the higher court, as witnesses clearly seemed compromised,” he told media. He said that the party will challenge the decision in superior courts.
The back-to-back convictions against Pakistan’s most popular politician were announced only a week before general election expected on February 8. The upcoming election in the country “is seen by many analysts as one of the least credible in the country’s nearly 77-year history,” CNN reported.
Imran Khan’s PTI party has already been stripped of its election symbol, the cricket bat, and all of its candidates will be contesting elections as independents.
The former star cricketer turned politician rose to power on a mandate of anti-corruption in 2018, but he was dramatically ousted in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022.
Khan’s legal troubles began soon after he was removed from office and has been facing more than a hundred cases since then. Khan says the legal cases against him were a plot to sideline him ahead of the polls. Pakistan has seen several protests since Khan’s May 2023 arrest.