Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan moved to the Islamabad High Court seeking bail in the Toshakhana and the Al-Qadir Trust cases, ARY News reported on Tuesday.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder, through his counsel, filed two separate pleas against an accountability court verdict that dismissed his post-arrest bail in both cases.
In the pleas, Khan has requested the Islamabad HC to set aside the accountability court’s decision and grant him bail. It was pleaded in the pleas that the accountability court had rejected bail after the arrest pleas of the PTI founder in both cases, ARY News reported.
The PTI founder has maintained that the cases against him aimed at “political victimisation” and are based on “mala fide intentions”.
Earlier on January 9, the Accountability Court in Islamabad rejected the bail applications of Imran Khan in Toshakhana and the 190 million-pound Al-Qadir Trust cases.
Judge Muhammad Bashir, presiding over the Toshakhana and 190-million-pound scandal case references, announced the verdict on petitions filed by deposed prime minister, ARY News reported.
EX ambassador rejects mention of “conspiracy, threat”
Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US and a key witness has rejected the mention of the words “conspiracy” or “threat” in the secret document at the centre of controversy in the cipher case.
Involving jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who also is a senior leader from his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), the cipher case pertains to a piece of paper, purported to be a diplomatic cable — the cipher — that Khan had waved at a public rally on March 27, 2022.
Naming the US, Khan had claimed that it was ‘evidence’ of an “international conspiracy” to topple his government. Khan and Qureshi, accused of mishandling it for political purposes, were indicted in December 2023 and both have pleaded not guilty.
During a hearing on Tuesday at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, former Ambassador Asad Majeed gave a first hand account to the special court Judge Abual Hasnat Zulqarnain about his meeting with a top US government official in March 2022, The News newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Majeed was the ambassador of Pakistan to the United States from January 2019 to March 2022.
Bringing out details about the meeting in public domain for the first time, Majeed said, on March 7, 2022, Assistant Secretary of the US Department of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu was invited to a working lunch, which was a pre-arranged meeting hosted at Pakistan House in Washington.
EX SECRETARY’S STATEMENT RECORDED
Earlier, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary Sohail Mahmood said that the copy of the controversial cipher had not been returned to the foreign ministry until his retirement.
He was recording his statement on Monday in the cipher case involving jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who also is a senior leader from his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI).
The cipher case pertains to a piece of paper, purported to be a diplomatic cable — the cipher — that Khan had waved at a public rally on March 27, 2022, and naming the US, had claimed that it was ‘evidence’ of an “international conspiracy” to topple his government. Khan and Qureshi, accused of mishandling it for political purposes, were indicted in December 2023 and both have pleaded not guilty.