Pakistan: Court allows Imran Khan to meet party lawyers at Adiala jail

A top Pakistani court on Thursday allowed Imran Khan to meet four lawyers of his party at the Adiala jail, days after the Punjab provincial government banned the former prime minister from holding any meetings at the prison for two weeks.

Citing security reasons, the Punjab province government – led by Maryam Nawaz of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) – on Tuesday imposed a two-week ban on all public visits, meetings and interviews at the high-security Adiala Jail at Rawalpindi, where the former prime minister Khan is lodged since last August.

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday allowed four PTI party lawyers to meet party founder Khan at the high-security prison after hearing a petition against the two-week ban on meetings with Adiala jail inmates, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

During the hearing, the jail superintendent said they had orders to allow six people apart from the lawyers to meet the 71-year-old former-cricketer-turned-politician but added that they couldn't allow six people daily in a jail that houses seven thousand prisoners.

Asserting that the jail superintendent had been giving new excuses during every hearing, Justice Arbab Muhammad Tahir said: "If you do not follow court orders, why should we not initiate contempt proceedings against you?" Later, during the hearing, the PTI counsel informed the court that they had designed a mechanism with the jail superintendent. The judge directed the party lawyer to appoint a focal person and make SOPs (standard operating procedures) for meetings with Khan and ordered four PTI lawyers to meet with the ex-premier in jail later in the day.

Separately, Khan was granted an appeal right in the cipher case, another report said.

The Islamabad High Court dismissed a plea contending that Khan and his aide, former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, do not have the right to appeal against their conviction in the diplomatic cipher case.

The court will hear the appeals of the PTI leaders "on merit" on March 18, the report said.

PTI founder Khan and party Vice-Chairman Qureshi were 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.

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