Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan moved to another jail after custody extended

Islamabad, Pakistan – After a court extended his custody by two weeks, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was transferred to a jail near Islamabad. In his 2022 removal case, state secrets are at stake.

The 70-year-old, who has been in custody for the past three weeks in the Attock Jail, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) away from Rawalpindi, was moved to Adiala Jail on Tuesday night. Earlier this month, Khan was sentenced to prison after he was convicted for corruption in a case.

As Khan was being brought to Rawalpindi by a large police convoy, video footage on social media showed thousands of Khan’s supporters flanking the road and throwing flower petals at the police.

Despite the fact that the Islamabad High Court overturned Khan’s conviction in August, he remains in custody as the authorities conduct an investigation into the leak of a secret diplomatic cable, called “cipher”, which Khan claims contributes to his allegations that the United States was responsible for his removal from power.

It was Khan’s lawyers who petitioned the Islamabad High Court to shift him to a different jail, and the court agreed to do so. Attock, on the other hand, is considered one of the largest prisons in the country, and they claimed he wasn’t allowed the facilities allowed under the prison rules.

A member of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had claimed that Khan’s life in Attock Jail was in danger.

As a former prime minister, the court ordered the prison authorities on Tuesday to move him to Adiala and wished him better facilities as a prisoner.

It is true that he [Khan] has never complained about the conditions in Attock prison, and has expressed that he is solely focused on the struggle for real freedom for the people of Pakistan, as Khan’s lawyer Intazar Hussain Panjutha told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, a day after meeting Khan in jail.

Khan has been demanding early elections ever since he was removed from power in April last year. However, the government has resisted Khan’s request.

It has been declared by the election commission that he is ineligible to contest polls after he was convicted in August. There will be general elections in January, according to this commission.