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Jailed ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan challenges graft conviction

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Pakistan's jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan appealed against his conviction and three-year sentence on corruption charges on Tuesday, his lawyer said, a ruling which analysts say is likely to fuel political instability.

Naeem Panjutha said the petition challenging the weekend conviction had been filed in Islamabad High Court which will hear the case on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Ex-cricketer Khan, 70, was jailed on charges of selling state gifts unlawfully during his tenure as premier from 2018 to 2022.

Khan has been at the heart of political turmoil since he was ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence last year, raising concern about stability in the nuclear-armed country as it grapples with an economic crisis.

The 241-million-population South Asian nation in June secured a last-gasp $3 billion deal with the IMF, which has sought a consensus on policy objectives among all political parties ahead of general elections due by November.

"Being aggrieved and dissatisfied", Khan has appealed to the high court to "set aside" the trial court's order that convicted and sentenced him, according to a copy of the petition posted by Panjutha on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Khan's legal team say he is being kept in abject conditions in a small C-class cell in a prison in Attock, near the capital Islamabad, with an open toilet, when he should qualify for a B-class cell with facilities including an attached washroom, newspapers, books and TV.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, who spent several months in jail on drug trafficking charges he says was fabricated during Khan's tenure, said that Khan himself had been a proponent of uniformity in prisons.

"As far as the open washrooms, the jails have got only open washrooms, there are no separate washrooms, and it could be in Khan's knowledge that the cells where we were kept were also the same," the minister told Geo News TV.

He said Khan could file an application in court that he shouldn't be kept with ordinary inmates.

"Whatever the court decides, it will be implemented and if he wants to have meals from home, he should seek a permission from court," he said.

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At least 18 dead in retaliatory sectarian attacks in Pakistan

The latest killings in a tribal district began on Friday night, when armed men attacked a village in the district, said the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

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At least 18 people were killed and 30 injured in further sectarian violence in northwestern Pakistan, officials said on Saturday, as tensions remained high following attacks on transport convoys that killed dozens of civilians this week, Reuters reported.

The latest killings in a tribal district began on Friday night, when armed men attacked a village in the district, said the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry.

"They set on fire petrol stations and damaged properties as part of revenge," he told Reuters by phone. He said he and top police officials would be visiting the area and engage tribal elders on both sides to restore order.

The toll since Thursday is 58 dead, read the report.

AFP reported on Saturday that 32 people were killed in the latest violence, citing an unnamed official.

On Thursday unidentified gunmen opened fire on passenger vehicles, killing over 40 in the Kurrram district, where armed Shia and Sunni Muslims have engaged in tribal and sectarian rivalry for decades over a land dispute near the Afghanistan border.

Most of the dead were Shiites, officials said, sparking retaliatory attacks by armed groups, with markets and schools remaining shut in a curfew-like situation, Reuters reported.

A police official requesting anonymity told Reuters that the death toll from the fresh violence could have been higher had residents of the village that was attacked not already evacuated their homes in anticipation of more violence.

He said the residents of Bagan village, a mostly Sunni area, had already left their homes and shifted to safe places in Lower Kurram.

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Gunmen attack Pakistan passenger vehicles, killing at least 38 people

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Gunmen opened fire on passenger vehicles in a tribal area in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 38 people and wounding 29, the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, said.

Reuters reported that among the fatalities in the attack, which occurred in the Kurram tribal district, were a woman and a child, Chaudhry said, adding: “It’s a major tragedy and death toll is likely to rise."

No group claimed responsibility for the incident.

"There were two convoys of passenger vehicles, one carrying passengers from Peshawar to Parachinar and another from Parachinar to Peshawar, when armed men opened fire on them,” a local resident of Parachinar, Ziarat Hussain told Reuters by telephone, adding that his relatives were travelling from Peshawar in the convoy.

President Asif Ali Zardari, in a statement, strongly condemned the attack on passenger vehicles.

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Pakistan’s ex-PM Imran Khan gets bail in state gifts case, his party says

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A court in Pakistan granted bail to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan in a case relating to the illegal sale of state gifts, his party said on Wednesday.

Khan, 71, has been in prison since August 2023, but it was not immediately clear if the embattled politician would be released given that he faces a number of other charges too, including inciting violence against the state, Reuters reported.

"If the official order is received today, his family and supporters will approach the authorities for his release," one of his party's lawyers, Salman Safdar, told journalists. Safdar added that, as far as he knew, Khan had been granted bail or acquitted in all the cases he faced.

However, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, told Geo TV Khan lacked bail in cases in which he is charged with planning riots by his supporters in the wake of his arrest in May last year.

Khan denies any wrongdoing, and alleges all the cases registered against him since he was removed from power in 2022 are politically motivated to keep him in jail.

The case in which he was granted bail on Wednesday by the Islamabad High Court is known as the Toshakhana, or state treasury case.

It has multiple versions and charges all revolving around allegations that Khan and his wife illegally procured and then sold gifts worth over 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession, which he received during his 2018-22 premiership.

Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were both handed a 14-year sentence on those charges, following a three-year sentence handed to him in late 2023 in another version of the same case.

Their sentences have been suspended in appeals at the high court.

The gifts included diamond jewellery and seven watches, six of them Rolexes - the most expensive being valued at 85 million rupees ($305,000).

Khan's wife was released last month after being in the same prison as Khan for months.

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