For a man staring down the barrel of a 10-year jail sentence, Imran Khan was oddly nonchalant in court last Tuesday. As his representatives argued passionately for a fair hearing, Pakistan’s ex-Prime Minister retrieved his eyeglasses, unfolded a newspaper, and did his utmost to ignore the surrounding commotion.
“At one point he looks up and says, ‘Oh, I don’t need to listen to this, it’s a fixed match, I know what the result is going to be,’” Khan’s sister, Aleema, tells TIME. “‘So why are all of you wasting your khbrknews?’”
It’s not a difficult conclusion to draw. Khan’s trial for allegedly leaking state secrets was conducted in camera inside a makeshift courtroom within a jail complex, with public and media banned. Khan’s own defense team were blocked from taking part, with the judge appointing two state-employed colleagues of the prosecution to represent the former national cricket captain instead. “When they gave the sentence, he said, ‘Oh, it’s only 10 years? I thought it would be 15,’” says Aleema. “So he’s laughing through the whole thing.”
The case heard one of more than 180 separate charges Khan, 71, currently faces and that have rendered a return to power nigh impossible for Pakistan’s most popular politician. He was back in court on Thursday on separate corruption charges related to the transfer of land for a charitable university he founded. On Saturday, he was sentenced to an additional seven years for having an “un-Islamic marriage.” “It’s becoming such a joke,” says Aleema.
But few in Pakistan are laughing as the nuclear-armed nation of 240 million stumbles towards general elections on Feb. 8. The legal onslaught on Khan dovetails with a broader purge of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which has seen thousands of workers arrested, dozens of its leaders quit under duress, its famed cricket-bat logo banned, and constituency boundary lines redrawn to allegedly benefit its opponents. Khan’s…
