The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday (29 August) suspended former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's recent conviction on corruption charges in the Toshakhana case.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri passed the order on the former prime minister's appeal against his prison term, confirmed his aide on legal affairs Naeem Panjutha said.
"Our application has been accepted, and the sentence has been suspended," Panjutha said on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
However, it was unclear whether this would lead to his release from jail.
"The copy of the judgment will be available shortly … all we are saying now is that [Imran's] request has been approved," Justice Farooq said.
Imran Khan was imprisoned on August 5 after being sentenced to three years in jail for unlawfully selling state gifts during his tenure as prime minister from 2018 to 2022. As a result of the conviction, and with a national election expected in coming months, Pakistan's Election Commission also barred Khan from contesting elections for five years.
He had filed an appeal in the high court against the conviction. He had also approached the Supreme Court (SC) against the IHC's decision to remand the case back to the trial court judge who had convicted him.
The uncertainty over whether Khan would be automatically released as a result of the High Court's decision is due to other court orders allowing for his arrest in other cases. It is not immediately clear how the ban on his contesting elections will be affected.
According to a Dawn report, the SC last week acknowledged "procedural defects" in Imran's conviction but had opted to wait for the IHC decision on Imran's plea. The court's observations had drawn the ire of the Pakistan Bar Council, which said there should be no "interference" in matters pending before the subordinate judiciary.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) last night, former interior minister Rana Sanaullah said, "He [Imran] will not come outside [of the jail] — release is not possible, [he] will have to face the prosecution in other cases!"
Ahead of today's proceedings, PTI lawyers Babar Awan and Salman Safdar reached the IHC. Speaking to media persons outside court, Awan said their fight was not just for a single case or one judgment.
"You all are in a bigger prison and we want to free all of you," he said.
PTI seeks bar on Imran's arrest in other cases
Meanwhile, Imran's legal team filed a fresh petition in the IHC today seeking directives to refrain authorities from further "illegal and unjustified arrest" of the former premier in any case filed against him after August 5, when he was convicted in the Toshakhana case.
The plea, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, mentions the cipher case — registered by the Federal Investigation Agency on August 15 — as one of the FIRs under which the PTI chief is seeking protection from arrest. The FIA had last week grilled Imran in the said case, which invokes the Official Secrets Act, for over an hour at the Attock Jail.
Filed through Barrister Salman Safdar, the petition named the state as a respondent and alleged that the cipher case had been filed against Imran "with malafide intentions" and termed it of "bogus nature".
The plea stated that the "only remedy available to avoid unjustified, illegal and straightaway arrest" was by invoking Article 10 (safeguards as to arrest and detention) of the Constitution for the "protection of his fundamental rights and safeguards".
The petition further said that the petitioner would "suffer irreparable loss in case he is arrested for another offence, which he has not committed".
It further expressed the apprehension that the PTI chief's "political adversaries and opponents would be able to further their nefarious designs and political ambitions in the absence" of the IHC's "kind intervention".
Prison conditions
In a separate development on Monday (28 August), the Attock Jail authorities submitted a report to the Supreme Court, detailing the facilities being provided to the ex-prime minister.
The report, submitted by the jail superintendent to comply with the SC's August 24 order, states that meals were being provided periodically on the convict's demand and that his washroom facilities have also been improved.
Previously, Imran's wife, Bushra Bibi, had moved an application before the Supreme Court wherein she expressed apprehensions that her husband's health was deteriorating fast, threatening his life.
The facilities provided to the ex-premier had been upgraded after Additional District and Sessions Judge Shafqatullah Khan submitted an inspection report based on his visit to the prison on August 15.
The report had declared that Imran's "grave concern" regarding a lack of privacy around his prison cell's toilet facilities in the jail due to a CCTV camera's presence was "genuine" and pointed to a violation of prison rules.
Subsequently, Punjab Prisons Inspector General Mian Farooq Nazir had said Imran had been shifted to a new cell on August 19, where the washroom had been renovated with five-foot-high walls.
