Imran Khan barred from holding meetings inside Adiala jail for two weeks: Report

Islamabad: Jailed former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan has been barred from holding meetings inside Rawalpindi's Adiala jail for two weeks, a media report said on Tuesday.

The development comes as 71-year-old Khan, who was moved to the Adiala jail in September 2023 from Attock jail, is serving an accumulative sentence of 31 years in various cases and has been engaging his lawyers, party leaders and family members during his imprisonment.

Previously the authorities had allocated Mondays and Thursdays as meeting days for the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

Former cricketer-turned-politician Khan has been barred from holdings meetings inside Rawalpindi's Adiala jail for two weeks, Geo News reported citing sources on Tuesday.

The ex-prime minister, along with former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, was handed down a sentence of 10 years each in the cipher case in January for publishing contents of a secret cable sent by the country's ambassador in Washington to the government in Islamabad.

The cipher case pertains to a piece of paper, purported to be a diplomatic cable -- the cipher -- that Khan had waved at a public rally on March 27, 2022, and naming the US, had claimed that it was ‘evidence’ of an “international conspiracy” to topple his government.

The Federal Investigation Agency filed the case against Khan and Qureshi on August 15 last year, which accused both of violating the secrecy laws while handling the cable sent by the Pakistan embassy in Washington in March 2022.

Khan and Qureshi have also been barred from politics for five years.

This was followed by another 14-year sentence awarded to Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, by an accountability court in the Toshakhana reference for misusing his 2018 to 2022 premiership to buy and sell gifts in state possession that were received during visits abroad and worth more than Rs140 million ($635,000).

The court also handed down a fine of Rs1.57 billion — Rs787 million each — to the couple.

Subsequently, Khan and Bushra were also sentenced to another seven years, along with a Rs500,000 penalty each, in in the "un-Islamic nikah" case for marrying each other before the completion of the 90-day iddat period following the latter's divorce.

Khan's party and associates have repeatedly demanded his release from "fabricated" cases while raising concerns for the former premier's safety inside the prison.

Last week, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) claimed to have arrested three terrorists and recovered a map of Adiala Jail, a hand grenade and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) from their possession.

Rawalpindi City Police Officer (CPO) Khalid Hamdani said police recovered automatic weapons and ammunition from the terrorists who hailed from Afghanistan.

Before that in November, police had found a suspicious bag laden with an explosive device near Adiala Road in Gorakhpur, Rawalpindi, just one kilometre away from the facility.

Meanwhile, the Islamabad High Court on Monday ordered detailed arguments on the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) contention that the appeals against the conviction of Khan and Qureshi in the cipher case were inadmissible.

A two-member division bench, comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Miangul Hasan Aurangzeb, asked the FIA prosecutor to inform the court how the appeals were not admissible and sought counterarguments from the lawyers for the appellants.

Justice Farooq asked the FIA’s special prosecutor to explain why the appeals were not maintainable, adding it was amazing that the law did not provide a right to appeal in such cases.

Further hearing was adjourned to Wednesday.