A Pakistani court has sentenced some of the most senior figures from Imran Khan’s opposition party to 10 years in prison for their involvement in anti-government protests in 2023.
Those sentenced on Thursday – and therefore immediately disqualified from serving in parliament – include the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, Omar Ayub Khan.
A total of 108 officials from Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party were jailed by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan’s Faisalabad city. Other prominent figures who were sentenced include Shibli Faraz, Hamid Raza and Zartaj Gul according to Pakistan’s leading daily newspaper Dawn.
The case relates to the unrest that gripped Pakistan on 9 May 2023 when supporters and workers from PTI staged major protests over Mr Khan’s arrest on corruption charges. The demonstrations ultimately descended into violent riots where military infrastructure and other state-owned buildings were vandalised. At least 10 people died in the capital Islamabad and in the aftermath around 4,000 people were arrested.
Mr Khan’s supporters, who accused the country’s powerful military of orchestrating his 2022 ousting as prime minister through a no confidence vote, targeted an airbase, multiple cantonments, the residence of a senior general, and the army headquarters.
Thursday’s verdict by the anti-terrorism court is the latest in a wave of prosecutions targeting PTI members and the party’s most senior leadership. Mr Khan himself has remained in jail for almost two years.
Thursday’s verdict came a week after the same court convicted and sentenced eight PTI members, including officials from the party’s previous provincial government in Punjab such as Yasmin Rashid, Ejaz Chaudhry, Mehmoodur Rashid and Umar Sarfraz Cheema, to 10 years in jail.
Mr Khan faces a separate trial on similar charges, with prosecutors accusing him and fellow PTI party leaders of instigating the unrest that saw protesters attack government and military sites.
In a statement on the latest convictions, PTI said that it was a “sad day for democracy”, stating that the party’s leaders have been “unjustly targeted in the false flag operation of 9 May”.
As a result, PTI said, the sentenced opposition leaders in both houses of the National Assembly stood disqualified, “paving way for more members in both houses using precipitous measures to have members elected, from the government side”.
“All this in the name of 9 May incident, based on testimony from the police officers who had supposedly hid under the table, with a disguise, heard the former prime minister Imran Khan, plotting a scheme to incite violence once he’s arrested,” the statement read.
Mr Khan, 72, was bailed later in 2023 but then rearrested on 5 August that year. He faces around 150 charges, ranging from corruption to terrorism, some of the most serious of which have already been thrown out by the courts. His party claims all the cases filed against him are politically motivated.
