Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan acquitted in state secrets case, but will remain in jail

A Pakistan high court on Monday overturned a treason conviction against former prime minister Imran Khan, who remains in jail on other charges.

The conviction was one of three slapped on Khan in the run-up to February elections, which he claims were orchestrated to prevent his return to power.

The decision by a two-member bench at Islamabad High Court was announced by Chief Justice Aamer Farooq.

“This is the first big case which was part of the political victimisation against Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi which has been dashed to the ground,” Salman Safdar, a lawyer for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, said outside court.

“We will celebrate this victory,” another of his lawyers, Ali Zafar, said in a TV interview, adding that the other cases faced by Khan would result in acquittals too.

Khan was convicted along with Qureshi, his former foreign secretary, of making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington in 2022.

He had touted the cipher as evidence that the United States had conspired to force him from power in 2022, when a no-confidence vote saw him replaced by the opposition.

“Thank God, the sentence is overturned,” a spokesman for legal affairs from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Naeem Panjutha, said in a post on the X social media platform.

The United States and Pakistan’s military have denied the accusation.

Khan remains jailed on a seven-year sentence for breaking Islamic law by marrying his wife Bushra Bibi too soon after her divorce.

He has also been found guilty of graft over gifts he received in his time as premier between 2018 and 2022.

While his 14-year sentence was suspended in April, the conviction still stands.

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Former Pakistani prime minister Imran