Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan hit with new 14-year jail sentence

Day after being given a 10-year imprisonment, former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan was handed a second 14-year prison sentence.

A state court in Pakistan declared disgraced former prime minister Imran Khan guilty of fraud on Wednesday, one day after he was given a 10-year sentence for leaking state secrets. Khan now faces a further 14 years in prison.

In a case involving the illicit sale of state gifts for profit when Khan was in government, his wife Bushra Bibi was also found guilty of graft and given a 14-year prison sentence.

In a statement, a representative for Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the biggest political party in the nation, stated, "Another sad day in our judicial system history, which is being dismantled."

Khan's punishment from the state's National Accountability Bureau includes a 10-year ban from holding public office. The bureau also fined the former leader and his wife 1.5 billion Pakistani rupees ($5.3 million). In the past, a lot of political observers predicted that he would win Pakistan's forthcoming general election on February 8.

Khan, a prominent figure in Pakistani politics for many years, claims that the accusations and arrests are made for political reasons, as do his supporters. Although some media reports claim the durations will be concurrent, it is unclear if the 10 and 14-year penalties will be served consecutively or concurrently.

The 71-year-old politician, who was once Pakistan's cricket team captain, was dismissed from office in 2022 and arrested in 2023 on corruption accusations. He had been appointed prime minister in 2018. Due to a corruption conviction, he was already serving a three-year prison sentence.

Khan urged his followers to cast ballots in the general election in a post on his former Twitter account, X, with the words, "My Pakistanis! This is your battleground, and it is your test to exact revenge on all wrongdoers by casting your ballot in a nonviolent manner on February 8. Only with your vote will innocent Pakistanis who have been detained for the past eight months be granted justice and released.

"On election day, you'll turn out in millions and defeat the organizers... and tell them that we are not sheep that can be driven with a stick," he continued.

In 2022, the former prime minister and his allies claimed that the United States, which has a complex and lengthy history with the Pakistani government, and Shehbaz Sharif, the country's current prime minister, had orchestrated a plot to remove him from office. Supporters of Khan claim that Washington wanted to see Khan, who has always been critical of the United States, ousted, and that problems started when the former leader started publicly criticizing Pakistan's potent army.

Both the Biden administration and Sharif refute the charges. Later in 2022, Khan seemed to change his tone toward the United States, saying that if re-elected, he would like to have a good relationship with the superpower.

Kamal Alam, a nonresident senior fellow at the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, told CNBC that Khan's punishment was not surprising.

Since the first Pakistani prime minister was assassinated in 1951, there have been assassinations and imprisonments in this pattern, with every one of them either dying or going to prison. Despite his popularity, Khan is not supported by the authorities and has not received assistance from any outside actors.

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