Aleema Khan, the sister of Imran Khan, says justice is not being served in the trial in the cipher case and this may lead to execution of the former prime minister.
“We have no fear, but there cannot be a fair trial without the media,” she said while speaking to reporters outside the Adiala Jail. She said there was a motive for the ban on the media coverage of Imran Khan’s trial in the cypher case that is currently being done inside Adiala Jail.
Aleema said the courtroom had been divided into cubicles and expressed her inability to understand what fear had led to this situation.
Aleema said that the courthouse was sealed from the outside and that her entire family was inside. As soon as they left their residence, she added, they were followed and threatened with arrest.
Aleema stated that Imran Khan might be executed in the cipher case. She said that Husain Haqqani was hired by the former army chief, General (r) Qamar Javed Bajwa, to lobby against Imran Khan on the orders of US official Donald Lu and he was given a huge amount for lobbying.
“It appears we are not in our country; we are rather in another country,” she said. “Seeing what is happening to us in our own country makes me extremely sad.”
On Thursday, a special court accepted the Federal Investigation Agency’s plea seeking in-camera trial of former prime minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in the cipher case.
The court began the cipher trial afresh at the Adiala Jail after Imran and Qureshi were indicted for a second time, according to reporters allowed to attend the hearing.
The cipher case pertains to a diplomatic document that the FIA’s charge sheet alleges was never returned by Imran. The PTI has long held that the document contained a threat from the United States to oust Imran as prime minister.
Aleema Khan has voiced her fears at a time when the Supreme Court of Pakistan is hearing a presidential reference against the “judicial murder” of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Bhutto was removed from power in a military coup on July 5, 1977, by the then army chief General Zia-ul-Haq. He was later controversially tried and executed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1979 for authorising the murder of a political opponent, Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri.
The judges who sentenced Bhutto to death in the fabricated murder case admitted years later that they did so under pressure and that Bhutto’s execution was in fact a “judicial murder”.
Ex-PM Imran Khan, Qureshi indicted again in Cipher case for the second time
