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Pakistan court jails ex-PM Imran Khan for 10 years ahead of elections

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A Pakistan court handed Imran Khan a 10-year jail term on Tuesday for leaking state secrets, his party said, the harshest sentence against the former prime minister so far and just 10 days before a general election.

The special court found Khan guilty of making public the contents of a secret cable sent by Pakistan's ambassador in Washington to the government in Islamabad, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said.

Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was also sentenced to 10 years in the same case, Reuters reported.

The jail term is the second conviction for Khan in recent months, and ensures the popular former prime minister will remain in jail, and out of the public spotlight, ahead of next week's general elections. The court was due to issue its written verdict later.

The PTI said it would challenge the decision. "We don't accept this illegal decision," Khan's lawyer Naeem Panjutha posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Khan aide Zulfikar Bukhari told Reuters that the legal team was given no chance to represent the former prime minister or cross examine witnesses, adding that the proceedings were carried out in jail.

He called the conviction an attempt to weaken support for Khan. "People will now make sure they come out and vote in larger numbers," he told Reuters.

The embattled former cricket star was previously sentenced to three years in a corruption case, which had already ruled him out of the general elections next week.

However, Khan's legal team was hoping to get him released from jail, where he has been since August last year, but the latest conviction means that is unlikely even as the charges are contested in a higher court.

Khan has been fighting dozens of cases since he was ousted from power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in 2022.
Khan says the cable that pertains to the case was proof of a conspiracy by the Pakistani military and the U.S. government to topple his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Washington and the Pakistan military deny the accusations.

The former prime minister has previously said the contents of the cable appeared in the media from other sources.

Khan's PTI, which won the 2018 elections, suffered a major setback earlier this month when a court upheld the Election Commission's decision to strip the party of its traditional election symbol, the cricket bat.

His candidates are now contesting as independents, many of them on the run amidst what the party calls a crackdown backed by the country's powerful military. The military denies this.

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Iran’s supreme leader threatens Israel and US with ‘a crushing response’ over Israeli attack

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

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Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people, the Associated Press reported.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the U.S. presidential election this Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The U.S. military operates throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The 85-year-old Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.”

But efforts by Iran to downplay the attack faltered as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed attacks damaged military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as damage at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran long has used those groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.

Iran, however, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests.

Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory,” he warned.

Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates a Nov. 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the rule of the shah at Tehran University. The shooting killed and wounded several students and further escalated the tensions consuming Iran at the time that eventually led to the shah fleeing the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd offered a raucous welcome to Khamenei, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture — similar to a “timeout” signal — given by the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Mideast standing up would “return in coffins” horizontally.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, following the Persian calendar. The Nov. 4, 1979, storming of the embassy by Islamist students led to the 444-day crisis, which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.

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Seven killed, dozens injured in blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan province

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Seven people including five schoolchildren were killed in a blast that hit a police van in Pakistan's Balochistan province on Friday, local media reported.

Thirty-nine others were injured in the blast which took place near a girls' high school in the Mastung district of the southwestern Balochistan province, Geo News reported.

Those killed included also a policeman. Four policemen are among the injured.

Several other vehicles, including rickshaws, present near the blast site were also damaged in the blast which was triggered by a remote-controlled explosive device.

The ages of the deceased schoolchildren, which include girls and boys, are between 10 to 13 years old.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

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Iran preparing strike on Israel from Iraqi territory within days, Axios reports

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Israeli intelligence suggests Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days, possibly before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two unidentified Israeli sources.

The attack is expected to be carried out from Iraq using a large number of drones and ballistic missiles, the Axios report added according to Reuters.

The report said that carrying out the attack through pro-Iran militias in Iraq could be an attempt by Tehran to avoid another Israeli attack against strategic targets in Iran.

Israel and Iran have engaged in a series of tit-for-tat military strikes, part of broader Middle East warfare set off by fighting in Gaza.

On Saturday, Israeli military jets struck missile factories and other sites near Tehran and in western Iran in retaliation for Tehran's Oct. 1 barrage of more than 200 missiles against Israel.

A spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Monday Tehran would "use all available tools" to respond to the Israeli strikes.

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