‘Cipher case’: Ex-PM Khan’s lawyer vows to challenge special court’s decision allowing in-camera trial

ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s lawyer Naeem Haider Panjutha vowed on Thursday to challenge the special court’s decision to allow an in-camera trial of Khan on charges that he leaked the contents of a secret document.
A special court established to hear the case had been conducting the trial inside the Adiala prison in Rawalpindi for weeks without media or members of the public allowed, before the Islamabad High Court ruled the hearings illegal last month and ordered them restarted in an open court.
Khan’s legal team has rejected the open trial conducted this week in prison, saying that only a few journalists were allowed to enter while the majority were denied access to the proceedingsThe case took another dramatic turn on Wednesday when the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said Khan and the co-accused, former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, had both been indicted. Khan’s lawyers objected, saying that legal requirements for an indictment were not fulfilled during the hearing.
Local media widely reported that the special court on Thursday agreed to a plea by the FIA to hold in-camera proceedings of the case against the former premier.
“It is unfortunate the cipher trial will be conducted in-camera again, but we will resist this move and challenge it in Islamabad High Court being a serious violation of the law,” Panjutha told Arab News.
“We want an open trial in the cipher case so that the nation knows about the ridiculous charge against the country’s most popular leader Imran Khan.”
Another member of Khan’s legal team, Taimur Malik, said he was “extremely disappointed” after reading about the special court’s decision to allow in-camera proceedings.
“We made detailed arguments today regarding the need for an open trial, access to media and cited various judgments of the Pakistani superior courts on this matter,” Malik wrote on social media platform X.

The FIA, on the other hand, has defended the argument for an in-camera trial, saying that an open hearing would expose sensitive information and documents involved in the case.
Khan is serving a three-year sentence at Adiala jail in a separate case in which he was convicted in August for failing to disclose assets earned from the sale of state gifts while he was PM from 2018-2022.
The cipher case against Khan relates to an alleged diplomatic correspondence between Washington and Islamabad that the former prime minister 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.
According to the police complaint against them, Khan and Qureshi, who was Khan’s foreign minister during his tenure, are both accused of leaking state secrets to unauthorized individuals by publicly disclosing the contents of the confidential diplomatic cable and distorting facts “with ulterior motives and for personal gains.” These actions, authorities say, had jeopardized the Pakistani state’s security interests.
Khan denies all charges, saying they are politically motivated to keep him and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party away from polls on Feb. 8.