Pakistan’s army buried Imran Khan with legal cases. The courts are digging him out.

Four months after Pakistan’s most controversial election in recent history, the question on everybody’s lips remains the same: How long before former Prime Minister Imran Khan is released from prison?

The cricketer-turned-politician, whose supporters defied all odds to emerge as the victors of the Feb. 8 poll, was convicted in three separate court cases in the run up to the general election – the first to do with selling state gifts while prime minister, the second for mishandling a diplomatic cable, and the third for marrying his wife without satisfying the requirements of Islamic law.

But recent rulings by the superior judiciary have given his supporters cause for optimism. In April, the Islamabad High Court suspended Mr. Khan’s sentence in the first case, and just last week, that same body overturned Mr. Khan’s conviction in the second.

This means that of the major court cases keeping Mr. Khan behind bars, only the one experts consider the flimsiest remains active pending an appeal. It also highlights a widening chasm between the country’s superior judiciary and its powerful military establishment.

It has become something of an open secret in Pakistan that the legal cases against Mr. Khan are being driven by army leadership, long considered the puppeteers of Pakistan politics who historically found a willing partner in the senior judiciary. Yet that relationship has become increasingly fraught in recent months as the judiciary has sought to assert its independence. 

“This is a power struggle in which the establishment’s power is shifting toward the judiciary, and in which Imran Khan has emerged as a key player,” says journalist Asma Shirazi, who has covered Pakistani politics for more than 20 years.

Mr. Khan’s release is not guaranteed. Indeed, members of his political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), say that hearings in this case are being deliberately postponed. But should the court succeed in overturning this final case, it would be a win for judicial independence – and could also unleash a populist firecracker back into Pakistan’s slowly stabilizing political sphere.

Path to release?

Earlier this year, six justices of the Islamabad High Court – the same body that overturned Mr. Khan’s conviction in the diplomatic cable case last week – accused the country’s military-controlled intelligence agencies of using intimidation to force justices to hear a frivolous case against Mr. Khan. That case, which alleged that Mr. Khan hid the existence of a child born out of wedlock, has been dismissed.

The marriage case, experts argue, was another attempt to sully Mr. Khan’s reputation in the conservative Islamic country. 

“The … conviction against him waiting to be overturned is for getting married to his consenting wife too soon after she was supposedly divorced,” says legal expert and political commentator Abdul Moiz Jaferii. “It is a tired and desperate charge, which was tried in a low and desperate manner.” 

Despite what many see as a total lack of legal merit, few are holding their breath for Mr. Khan’s release. 

Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, says the military still retains enough leverage over the courts to ensure that Mr. Khan “doesn’t see freedom anytime in the near future.”

It is a view shared by Mr. Jaferii. “I don’t see how they are going to continue to keep him imprisoned as these sham trials are exposed on appeal, but I’m sure they will come up with more and more desperate ways to do so.”

Case for restraint

A large part of this doubt is the perception that Mr. Khan’s release would prove catastrophic not just for the incumbent administration of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, but also for the high command of the Pakistan army, whose members Mr. Khan has made a habit of humiliating. 

The personal animus between Mr. Khan and the chief of the Pakistan army, Gen. Syed Asim Munir, dates back to the former’s time in office, when he sacked General Munir unceremoniously from his position as head of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s premier spy agency. There are other senior generals whom Mr. Khan has variously accused of brutalizing his supporters, dismantling his government, and, in the case of Gen. Faisal Naseer, of planning his assassination. 

The stakes are so high for so many powerful people that the thought of a liberated Mr. Khan is, for some, inconceivable. And among those who do see it as possible, some fear a new kind of autocracy. While serving as prime minister, Mr. Khan governed in a way that was increasingly presidential. He seldom went to parliament and relied on ordinances to conduct government business. During his tenure, a number of opposition leaders were also imprisoned. 

“If Imran Khan comes out with the backing of the judiciary, there is really no one who can stop him,” says Ms. Shirazi, the journalist. “It is even possible that he could challenge and take control of the entire state apparatus as an individual.”   

But Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, a PTI stalwart and former special assistant to Mr. Khan, has urged the former premier to show restraint in the event of his release.

“We must be very mature about this,” he says. “Imran Khan coming out with all this public support … has an added responsibility to maturely navigate the political system: 1) by taking us to free and fair elections in the most political manner possible; and 2) by concentrating on how we bring political stability.”