Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaaf (PTI) vice president Shah Mehmood Qureshi have been acquitted in the case of leaking state secrets. On Monday, the capital Islamabad High Court (IHC) acquitted two people from the case in question.
The lower court of the country sentenced Imran Khan and Shah Mehmood Qureshi to 10 years of imprisonment in this case on January 30. Later, PTI's lawyers appealed to the Islamabad High Court seeking annulment of the verdict.
A hearing on the application was held on Monday. After the hearing, the combined bench of Justice Amer Farooq and Justice Miyagul Hasan Aurangzeb released Imran-Qureshi from the case in a summary judgment.
Controversy over Imran's leak of state secrets began on 27 March 2022; About 2 weeks before he lost the post of Prime Minister of Pakistan. While addressing a public meeting that day, Imran Khan showed a letter and said that political opponents are conspiring against him with the government of foreign countries and this letter has proof of it.
However, Imran did not read the letter in the public meeting nor did he give any indication about what is in the letter. But Imran said in a public meeting on April 10, a few days after opposition MPs were ousted by a no-confidence vote, that a meeting was held with Pakistan's ambassador to the country, Donald Lu, the US Secretary of State for South and Central Asia. In that meeting, Donald Lu proposed to Pakistan's ambassador to remove Imran Khan from power.
According to Imran, Lu said that if Imran Khan was ousted, then the corruption charges pending in court against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) chairman Nawaz Sharif and other senior party leaders would be settled.
But the matter stopped there as the United States completely denied this allegation. Shehbaz Sharif, acting chairman of PMLN and younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, became the prime minister of Pakistan after Imran was ousted from power. He also did not pay attention to the matter for a long time.
But things took a different turn in September this year. At that time, after the leak of two audio tapes of Imran Khan, PTI Vice Chairman Shah Muhammad Qureshi and Secretary General Asad Omar, the country's politics started to stir. In the audio tape, the three can be heard discussing how the PTI can make political use of the letter.
Then on September 30, the Caretaker Cabinet directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Pakistan's central investigative agency, to investigate the matter. Last October, the FIA submitted a report declaring Imran and Qureshi as criminals. Taking note of that report, the election caretaker cabinet allowed the FIA to file a case against Imran Khan in a special court that month.
On January 30, three months after filing the case, the lower court convicted Imran and Qureshi and sentenced them to 10 years in prison; Which was waived today (Monday). Both Imran and Qureshi are currently in jail. They are unlikely to be released from prison as a result of this ruling. They are currently serving their sentence as convicts in a case of inciting violence across the country on May 9 last year.
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