A special court formed to hear cases under the Official Secrets Act on Saturday adjourned the hearing on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s petition seeking bail in the cipher case till tomorrow (Monday).
Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Judge Abual Hasnat Zulqarnain, who has been given additional charge of the special court, conducted the in-camera hearing on the case. The decision was issued in the case of the missing cipher — a classified state document that the former prime minister had waved during his political gathering ahead of his ouster from office last year.
While the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had overturned a lower court’s decision to jail him for three years with Rs100,000 fine — a judgment that kept him from contesting upcoming elections — he remains behind bars due to his judicial remand in the cipher case.
The FIA had officially arrested the former prime minister in the cipher case earlier this month after booking him under Official Secrets Act.
Subsequently, the PTI chief was sent on judicial remand in the cipher case till August 30 at the same time while he was serving his sentence in the Toshakhana case at Attock jail. In the last hearing, the court extended Khan’s judicial remand till September 13 in the cipher case.
Sources revealed that the PTI chairman’s lawyers Babar Awan and Salman Safdar gave their arguments on the bail plea. During Saturday’s hearing, Advocate Safdar said that the PTI chief’s lawyers had to walk about 1.5 kilometres every time they visited the Attock Jail — where Khan has been imprisoned since his conviction in the Toshakhana case on August 5 for failing to properly declare gifts he received while in office.
Advocate Safdar told the court a petition has been filed against Khan’s trial at the Attock Jail. Meanwhile, Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) special prosecutors had opposed hearing arguments presented by the deposed prime minister’s lawyers, asking the court to adjourn the hearing. The prosecutor also raised objections to the petitions filed by the PTI’s legal team at the Islamabad High Court (IHC).
The controversy first emerged on March 27, 2022, when Khan — less than a month before his ouster in April 2022 — brandished a letter, claiming that it was a cipher from a foreign nation, which mentioned that his government should be removed from power.
He did not reveal the contents of the letter nor mention the name of the nation that had sent it. But a few days later, he named the United States and said that Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs Donald Lu had sought his removal.
The cipher was about former Pakistan ambassador to the US Asad Majeed’s meeting with Lu.
The former prime minister, claiming that he was reading contents from the cipher, said that “all will be forgiven for Pakistan if Imran Khan is removed from power”.
Then on March 31, the National Security Committee (NSC) took up the matter and decided to issue a “strong demarche” to the country for its “blatant interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan”.
Later, after his removal, then-prime minister Shehbaz Sharif convened a meeting of the NSC, which came to the conclusion that it had found no evidence of a foreign conspiracy in the cipher.
In the two audio leaks that took the internet by storm and shocked the public after these events, the former prime minister, then-federal minister Asad Umar, and then-principle secretary Azam could allegedly be heard discussing the US cipher and how to use it in their interest.
On September 30, the federal cabinet took notice of the matter and constituted a committee to probe the contents of the audio leaks.In October, the cabinet gave the green signal to initiate action against the former prime minister and handed over the case to the FIA.