UN panel says former Pakistani PM Khan was arbitrarily detained

Islamabad

A group of independent United Nations experts on Monday demanded the immediate and unconditional release of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying his imprisonment is arbitrary and violates international law.

The Geneva-based Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which reports to the UN Human Rights Council, issued an opinion saying that Pakistani authorities have no legal basis for Khan's detention.

The five-member panel stressed that the imprisonment of the 71-year-old former Pakistani leader violated at least a dozen articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The Working Group calls on the Government of Pakistan to take the necessary measures to address Mr. Khan's situation without delay and bring it into line with relevant international standards, it said.

Khan was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in August 2023 for alleged corrupt practices after a trial that he and independent legal experts called a violation of due process. Three days later, the Election Commission of Pakistan disqualified him from running for office for five years.

The conviction is linked to his alleged failure to report and disclose gifts received during his tenure as prime minister in the so-called Toshakhana affair. Toshakhana, which literally means “treasure house”, is a government department where gifts received by Pakistani leaders during their visits abroad are stored and displayed.

The UN panel determined that the prosecution was legally unfounded from the outset and that Khan's unlawful detention appeared to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office.

The opinion, dated March 25, was only made public on Monday. The experts concluded that the appropriate solution would be to release Mr. Khan immediately and grant him an enforceable right to compensation and other remedies.

Khan, a philanthropist, politician and former cricket star, has been in prison since last August. He served as Pakistan's prime minister from 2018 until April 2022, when an opposition-led parliamentary no-confidence vote ousted him from power.

Pakistani authorities, allegedly acting on behalf of the country's powerful military, have filed numerous cases against the ousted leader, accusing him of murder, sedition, corruption and other crimes.

Khan denies the accusations, saying they are frivolous and aimed at removing him from power. He heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), considered the most popular political party in the South Asian country of about 245 million people.

The experts noted that they had contacted the Pakistani government through regular communication procedures to clarify the legal provisions justifying Khans' detention and its compatibility with the state's obligations under relevant international treaties.

The working group regrets not having received a response from the government to this communication, it said.

Pakistani officials did not immediately respond to the U.N. findings.

The UN group of experts is empowered to investigate alleged cases of arbitrary deprivation of liberty and to issue legal opinions on such cases. Its opinions are not legally binding, but they have high reputational value.

Khan's party welcomed the group's findings and renewed its demand for Khan's immediate release.

The international silence has finally been broken on Imran Khan's illegal imprisonment, said Zulfi Bukhari, Khan's adviser and PTI spokesperson.

International condemnation of the way the Pakistani government has unlawfully deprived Mr. Khan of his liberty and rights has been echoed in the United States, the United Nations…and now the Working Group [is] highlighting this situation as a blatant effort to interfere with his intentions to run for political office, Bukhari said.

In the run-up to Pakistan's February 2024 general elections, PTI candidates have been arrested, tortured, and intimidated to force them to leave the party. Authorities have blocked and disrupted PTI campaign rallies, and the party has been stripped of its iconic symbol, the cricket bat, in a controversial move, forcing its candidates to run as independents.

Days before the February 8 election, Khan was convicted in three other cases and sentenced to additional 10, 14 and seven years in prison, respectively. He blamed the military for the crackdown on his party, vote-rigging and the shutdown of mobile phones and the internet on election day, charges denied by the election commission and the military.

Despite the restrictions, PTI-aligned independents won the largest number of directly elected seats, 92, but fell short of the simple majority needed to form government.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 368-7 to call for a full and independent investigation into allegations of interference or irregularities in Pakistan's elections.

Islamabad has rejected the call for an investigation, considering it interference in the country's internal affairs, saying the US Congress resolution stemmed from an incomplete understanding of the political situation and the electoral process in Pakistan.

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