A Pakistani court on Friday convicted former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi in a bribery case, sentencing Khan to 14 years in prison.
Khan has been in custody since August 2023 and has been charged with about 200 cases, but his party says the latest verdict was used to silence him.
“I will neither make any deal nor seek any concessions,” Khan told reporters in the courtroom after the verdict was handed down.
The anti-corruption court, which met in a prison near the capital Islamabad where Khan is being held, convicted him and his wife over a welfare foundation they founded together called the Al-Qadir Foundation.
“The prosecution has proven its case. Khan has been convicted,” said Judge Nasir Javed Rana, announcing a sentence of 14 years for Khan and seven years for Bibi.
Bibi, a religious healer who was recently released on bail, was arrested in court after the verdict was delivered, her spokesman Mashal Yousafzai said.
Khan has said the cases are politically motivated and designed to prevent him from returning to power.
The sentence has been postponed several times in the past month, and analysts say the prison sentence was used to pressure Khan into accepting a deal with the military to retire from politics.
Since he was ousted from power in 2022, Khan has launched an unprecedented campaign of outspoken criticism of the country’s powerful generals.
Khan has previously been convicted of four crimes, two of which were overturned, while the sentences in the other two cases were suspended.
He remains in prison, however, due to pending cases.
A UN panel of experts found last year that Khan’s detention “had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office.”
Khan was barred from running in February’s election, and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has been hampered by widespread repression.
The PTI won more seats than any other party in the election, but was ousted from power by a coalition of parties seen as more susceptible to influence by the military establishment, Reuters reports.
