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Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of "wilfully" leaking sensitive classified information. Khan, 71, who is already serving a three-year prison sentence after being convicted on corruption charges in August, was sentenced by a special court sitting within Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.
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Shah Mahmood Qureshi, foreign minister in Khan's administration and vice chairman of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, was also sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Naeem Panjutha, a lawyer for Khan, condemned the ruling in a post on X.
"We don't accept this illegal decision," he wrote.
A spokesman for the PTI party added that it would challenge Tuesday's ruling.
Gohar Ali Khan, who succeeded Khan as the leader of the PTI party, called for calm within the party.
"An effort is being made to shift our focus from the elections, everyone will be held accountable on Feb. 8," he told reporters.
The convictions under the country's Secrets Act come nine days before a general election in which Khan is banned from taking part.
Khan was found to have "illegally retained and wrongly communicated" a document containing top-secret information regarding the United States and Pakistan while he was prime minister in 2022.
The case relates to a cable from Pakistan's U.S. Ambassador to then Foreign Minister Shah Qureshi claiming that Washington wanted Khan out due to his failure to denounce Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
The cable was reported missing from the prime minister's official files in September 2022 and the cabinet subsequently claimed it had been stolen.
But Khan was found to have earlier taken it home where he conspired with Qureshi to misuse the document, specifically producing it at a rally of supporters in March 2022 as proof that there was a foreign plot to remove him from office.
A month later Khan was ousted as prime minister in a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly.
Neither man was convicted of the more serious charge of damaging diplomatic relations which carries a sentence of life in prison or possible execution.
The trial was the second in the case after the original indictment was "voided" in November by the High Court in Islamabad, ruling it illegal because the correct procedures for holding a trial inside jail had not been followed.
Khan and Qureshi were re-indicted on the same charges and a new trial got underway Dec. 13 only for the Supreme Court to intervene within days, ordering both men be released on bail on grounds they posed no threat to society.
The three judges also ruled that "incarceration of a political competitor during the period of elections ... gravely affects the fundamental rights of the voters and prejudices the genuineness and integrity of the elections."
However, Khan was not released because he is currently serving a three-year sentence after being convicted in August on corruption charges related to profiting from selling official state gifts, worth $635,000, received from foreign dignitaries while he was prime minister.
That resulted in him being slapped with a ban prohibiting him from running for office for five years by the Electoral Commission for the second time in 10 months.
In October 2022, the commission banned Khan from holding office for five years and removed him as an MP days after his party won six of eight parliamentary seats and a number of provincial seats in a general election.
Khan, who is appealing all the cases against him, alleges he is a victim of a plot by his political opponents to silence him and suppress his populist PTI party-led movement.
