Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan remained in prison despite his conviction being suspended, his lawyers said, claiming that a “manipulation of justice” was keeping him behind bars. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said that the Islamabad High Court overturned a lower court’s decision to jail him for three years. His lawyers said he was granted bail and they were initially hopeful he would be released from Attock Jail where he has been held for three weeks.
However, Imran Khan remained in detention because of a previous arrest over a case related to classified state documents. One of his lawyers said that Imran Khan was “on judicial remand” and would appear before a special court in Islamabad on Wednesday. “He was arrested prior to today’s court ruling. The exact date of his arrest remains unclear,” another lawyer Gohar Khan told news agency AFP. Another lawyer Muhammad Shoaib Shaheen said “his legal team was intentionally left uninformed and kept in the dark. This constitutes a manipulation of justice.”
Imran Khan’s three-year sentence was handed down in the Toshakhana case as the court held him guilty of failing to properly declare gifts he received while in office. The former prime minister has also been previously denied bail in at least nine other cases including three in anti-terrorism courts and six in the district courts in Islamabad.
He was also briefly jailed on graft charges in May sparking days of protests in Pakistan after which his party has been targeted by a major crackdown. Imran Khan was ousted from office in April 2022.