PAKISTAN’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been sentenced to 17 years in prison after a Pakistani court found them guilty of illegally retaining and selling valuable state gifts.
The sentence, handed down on Saturday, capped a years-long saga that saw the duo accused of selling various gifts including jewellery from the Saudi Arabian government at far below market value. They have denied all charges.
In order to keep gifts from foreign dignitaries, Pakistani law requires officials to purchase them at market value and to declare profits from any sales.
But prosecutors claimed that the couple profited from the items after purchasing them at an artificially low price of $10,000, compared with their market rate of $285,521.
Khan’s supporters were quick to denounce the ruling, with his spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari saying that “criminal liability was imposed without proof of intent, gain, or loss, relying instead on a retrospective reinterpretation of rules”.
His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, wrote on social media that the proceedings were a “sham” and criticised international media coverage of the case.
Aleema Khanum, the former prime minister’s sister, told Al Jazeera that the case was fabricated.
“The whole country’s knows he’s an honest man,” she said. “He is isolated, he is being tortured through solitary confinement, him and his wife. This is the situation, two and a quarter months.”
“You think Imran is going to spend 10 years in jail for a necklace being underpriced. Seriously? That’s 17 years of conviction?” Khanum asked. “Of course it is a fraudulent set-up. This is a collapsed judicial system.”
The 73-year-old former leader served as Pakistan’s prime minister from 2018 until April 2022, when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote.
Khanum said the case was part of a broader effort to keep Khan out of power by his political opponents who she accused of “stealing the people’s mandate”.
He was imprisoned starting in August 2023 on various charges of corruption and revealing state secrets, all of which he has denied and claimed to be politically motivated. He has been acquitted of some charges.
An internationally famous cricket player in the heyday of his sporting career, Khan remains popular in Pakistan, with his imprisonment leading to protests throughout the last two years.