Pakistan: Imran Khan sentenced to 14-year jail in al-Qadir trust case, wife Bushra gets 7-yr prison term

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 14 years in a corruption case.

In the same case, Imran’s wife, Bushra Bibi, has been sentenced to seven years.

The conviction and sentencing have come in £190 million Al-Qadir Trust case in which Imran and Bushra have been found guilty of obtaining billions of rupees and land worth hundreds of kanals from Bahria Town Ltd for legalising Rs 50 billion that was identified and returned to the country by the United Kingdom during Khan’s premiership, according to Dawn newspaper.

Imran and Bushra have also been handed fines of Rs 10,00,000 Rs 500,000 respectively and the failure to pay the fine would carry a six-month jail sentence, according to the newspaper.

Imran’s party Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) has dubbed the verdict as politically motivated.

“You can guess the injustice that have occurred over the last two years. If a fair decision is made, Imran and Bushra will be acquitted,” PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan told the media outside the jail in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi where the verdict was announced in a makeshift court.

Imran has been in jail since 2023 and has since been slapped with more than 100 cases. He had a falling out with the country’s all-powerful military-intelligence establishment which he blamed for ousting him from power the previous year in a conspiracy involving the Joe Biden administration of the United States and the Opposition parties at the time which are currently in power in Pakistan. In April 2022, Khan lost premiership after he lost a trust vote in the parliament.

In December 2023, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) of Pakistan filed a corruption case against Imran and others, including Bushra, in relation to the Al-Qadir University Trust. The Dawn reported that the NAB alleged that Imran played a “pivotal role in the illicit transfer of funds meant for the state of Pakistan into an account designated for the payment of land by Bahria Town, Karachi”.

The NAB alleged that real estate tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain’s son, Ahmed Ali Riaz, transferred 240 kanals of land to Farhat Shahzadi, a close friend of Bushra, and Zulfi Bukhari, a former aide of Imran, received land under a trust, which NAB argued did not exist at the time of the transfer, according to the newspaper.