ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government on Tuesday approved the jail trial of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in the case of a £190 million settlement with a property tycoon, the law ministry said, hours after a court temporarily halted in-prison proceedings of another case against the ex-premier.
Government officials allege Khan and his wife received land worth millions of dollars as a bribe from a real estate tycoon through the Al-Qadir Trust, a non-governmental welfare organization set up by Bushra Watto, Khan’s third wife, and Khan in 2018 when he was still in office. The trust runs a university outside Islamabad devoted to spirituality and Islamic teachings, a project inspired by the former first lady, who is also commonly known as Bushra Bibi and has a reputation as a spiritual healer.
Khan and his aides have denied any wrongdoing in the case. The developer has also denied the charges.
“The Ministry of Law has issued a notification for the jail trial of Chairman PTI,” the law ministry said in a notification, referring to Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and saying his trial would be held in Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail where Khan is serving a three-year sentence in a separate corruption case for not declaring assets earned through the sale of state gifts when he was PM.
The then government of PM Shehbaz Sharif had said in May the Al-Qadir trust was a front for Khan to receive valuable land as a bribe from a real estate developer, Malik Riaz Hussain, who is one of Pakistan’s richest and most powerful businessmen.
The trust has nearly 60 acres of land worth over $24 million and another large piece of land in Islamabad close to Khan’s hilltop home, the then interior minister said at a press conference on May 11, the same day Khan was briefly arrested in the case. He was released on bail days later.
The 60-acre piece of land in Punjab state’s Jhelum district is the official site of the university but very little has been built there.
Then Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb also raised questions about donations given for operations of the under-construction institution.
“The trust received 180 million rupee ($635,144.67) for operational expenses, but records showed only 8.52 million rupees” on the books, she said in a statement issued on May 12.
The government said the scheme originated with 190 million pounds repatriated to Pakistan in 2019 by Britain after Hussain forfeited cash and assets to settle a British probe into whether they were proceeds of crime.
It said instead of putting it in Pakistan’s treasury, Khan’s government used the money to pay fines levied by a court against Hussain for illegal acquisition of government lands at below-market value for development in Karachi.
The interior minister alleged Hussain gave the land in Jhelum and Islamabad to Al-Qadir Trust in exchange for that favor.
CIPHER CASE
Separately on Tuesday, the Islamabad High Court issued a stay order against Khan’s prison trial in another case in which he is charged with leaking state secrets.
The saga, which has come to be popularly known as the cipher case, relates to an alleged diplomatic correspondence between Washington and Islamabad that Khan says was proof that his ouster as PM in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in April 2022 was part of a US conspiracy to remove him. Washington has repeatedly denied Khan’s accusations.
Khan says the US got involved in the plot to oust him after his visit to Moscow and less than a month before his removal, he waved a letter to a crowd during a public rally, claiming it was a cipher from a foreign nation calling for the end of his government.
Khan later revealed that country to be the US and said the secret diplomatic letter spoke of dire consequences if he continued to get closer to Russia.
Khan had traveled to Moscow on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and says the US and Pakistan’s own army, at the behest of the US, were opposed to him for pursuing an independent foreign policy, and thus banded together to overthrow his government. All three deny the charge. The government has since accused Khan of leaking state secrets and using them for political gains.
A special court was formed on August 21 under the Official Secrets Act, 1923, to adjudicate the matter through in-camera proceedings. The first hearing was held on August 30 in a high-security prison in Punjab’s Attock district where Khan was imprisoned after being convicted in the sale of state gifts case on Aug. 5. He has since been moved to Adiala jail.
A day before the hearing, a notification was issued by the law ministry saying the cipher case trail would be held in prison due to “security concerns.”
Khan’s lawyers opposed the decision and submitted a request for an open hearing, saying they were concerned the ex-PM would not get a fair trial behind closed doors. Last month, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party also took the matter to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) where its plea was turned down by Chief Justice Aamir Farooq who said there was apparently no malice behind the government’s decision to hold the jail trial.
Khan’s legal team then filed an intra-court appeal against the decision which led to Tuesday’s stay order.
“Islamabad High Court issues a stay order against [Khan’s] jail trial,” Naeem Haider Panjutha, the ex-premier’s spokesperson on legal affairs, said in a social media post. “Justice[s] Mian Gul Hasan Aurangzeb and Saman Rafat Sahiba heard the case.”
The Islamabad High Court adjourned the hearing on Khan’s appeal against the prison trial until November 16 while seeking details of the circumstances that led to the decision to hold the trial in prison.
With inputs from Reuters
