Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf get together chairman Gohar Khan, middle, celebrates with supporters after a court docket overturned the conviction and seven-year jail time period of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his spouse in Islamabad, Pakistan, July 13, 2024. | Photograph credit score: AP
A Pakistani court docket on July 13 overturned the conviction and seven-year jail time period of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his spouse within the case of the couple’s alleged unlawful marriage in 2018, eradicating the final recognized hurdle on the trail to their launch almost a 12 months after they had been jailed, attorneys mentioned.
Naeem Panjutha, one among Khan’s attorneys, mentioned the court docket introduced the decision within the garrison metropolis of Rawalpindi, the place the previous prime minister is being held.
The acquittal comes two weeks after one other appeals court docket upheld the February 5 conviction and sentence of Khan and his spouse, Bushra Bibi.
The court docket in its temporary order mentioned that if the couple is just not needed in another case, they need to be launched.
Bibi is Khan’s third spouse and a non secular healer. She was beforehand married to a person who claimed to have divorced her in November 2017, lower than three months earlier than she married Khan. Islamic regulation, as upheld in Pakistan, requires a three-month ready interval earlier than a brand new marriage.
Ms Bibi mentioned they divorced in August 2017 and the couple insisted throughout the trial that they didn’t violate the ready interval.
It was unclear how the federal government would reply to the court docket order. Authorities have registered a number of instances in opposition to Khan since 2022, when he was ousted from energy by way of a no-confidence vote in parliament.
The most recent improvement got here a day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court docket dominated that Khan’s get together was wrongly denied not less than 20 seats in parliament, dealing a serious blow to the nation’s fragile ruling coalition.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf get together had earlier been excluded from a system that provides events further seats reserved for girls and minorities within the Nationwide Meeting, or decrease home of Parliament. Whereas the decision was a serious political victory for Khan, it might not put his get together ready to topple the federal government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who got here to energy after a Feb. 8 election that Khan’s allies say was rigged.
Khan has been embroiled in additional than 150 authorized instances, together with incitement to violence, since his arrest in Could 2023. Throughout the nationwide unrest that adopted, Khan’s supporters attacked navy and authorities buildings in a number of components of the nation and set hearth to a constructing housing the state-run Radio Pakistan within the northwest.
The violence solely stopped when the Supreme Court docket launched Mr Khan. In early August 2023, Mr Khan was arrested once more after a court docket sentenced him to 3 years in jail for corruption.
Mr Khan has since been granted bail in varied courts in all of the instances wherein he has been convicted.