LAHORE: After the announcement of the verdict against former prime minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi by a special court in the cipher case on Tuesday, legal experts gave mixed opinions about the sentence as some of them damned the decision while others endorsed it.

Senator Azam Nazeer Tarar, a former law minister, said the law took its course in the cipher case, which carried charges of leaking a diplomatic cable and not returning it to the foreign office.

Talking to Dawn, the PML-N senator said the trial court had no other option but to announce a guilty decision against Imran as the evidence was undeniable. He said the PTI founder did not care about national security and used a classified document to save his government. He insisted that the leak of a diplomatic document was a very serious matter and the former prime minister made a mockery of the Official Secrets Act.

Asked about haste shown by the trial court in deciding the case, Mr Tarar said repeated opportunities were given to the PTI leaders but their lawyers failed to appear for cross-examining the prosecution witnesses. He believed that the non-appearance of the defence lawyers was a deliberate move to politicise and delay the trial.

However, Hamid Khan, a senior lawyer and PTI leader, termed the conviction a political decision.

“This was not a trial, but a mistrial,” he said while talking to a private news channel. He believed that no high court could sustain the sentence handed down by the special court.

Mr Hamid said courts don’t appoint state counsel without the consent of the accused person.

He said every lawyer had a right to do a lengthy cross-examination.

He said an appeal would be filed before the Islamabad High Court once after getting an attested copy of the detailed verdict of the trial court.

Former attorney general Ashtar Ausaf Ali suggested stricter punishment in cases involving national security and that the 10-year sentence was not enough for the charges involved in the cipher case.

He stated that the appointment of state counsel to represent an accused in the absence of defence counsel was not unusual. He said such a situation arises when a defence lawyer attempts to delay or manipulate the trial proceedings.

Senior PTI lawyer and former Punjab governor Sardar Latif Khosa took to X, formerly Twitter, to express his views on the verdict, stating that the ‘fake case’ would not last long, adding that the nation must not lose hope and everyone must cast a vote on Feb 8.

“Imran Khan will be out soon, the best revenge for cruelty is to vote,” Khosa tweeted.

He added that the nation held the power to free Mr Khan from prison and take him directly to the PM’s House.

Talking to DawnNews, Advocate Abdul Moiz Jaferii said the trial court demonstrated an unnecessary haste to conclude the proceedings.

He said it was acknowledged in the bail hearing that the harsh penalties did not apply to the cipher case because the main charge was not a formal conspiracy to harm the country but rather negligence that led to the loss of the diplomatic document.

He believed that misplacing the secret document carries entirely a separate charge and penalty.

Mr Jaferii said a detailed discussion on the conviction could only happen after the release of the detailed judgment but wondered under what section of the law the special court announced a 10-year sentence.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2024

Header image: Former premier Imran Khan and ex-foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi attend the opening of a special meeting of the 57-member OIC in Islamabad on December 19, 2021. — AFP/File