Islamabad: In yet another blow to Imran Khan, the jailed former prime minister of Pakistan has been booked under the Official Secrets Act for making the content of a confidential diplomatic cable from the country’s embassy in the US public, it emerged on Friday.
Khan, 70, is currently serving a three-year jail term after he was sentenced by a court in a corruption case earlier this month.
Quoting unnamed sources, a report in Geo News claimed that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman has been booked under Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 in the cipher case on the basis of a first information report (FIR) registered by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) against him.
The counter-terrorism wing of the FIA had registered the case against the former prime minister after ascertaining his deliberate involvement in misusing the cipher (a classified diplomatic document) following a probe, the report said.
Offences under Section 5, if proved in a court of law, involve punishment of imprisonment from two to 14 years, and in some cases even a death sentence, the report said.
Citing the cipher, Khan has been alleging the US of hatching a conspiracy to topple his government. He had brandished the cipher at a public rally to back his claims. The US has time and again denied such allegations, terming them “categorically false”.
The purported cipher contained an account of a meeting between US State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and then Pakistani envoy Asad Majeed Khan.
Of late, the cricketer-turned-politician has come under increased scrutiny following the publication of a purported copy of the secret cable by the US media outlet The Intercept, with many in the previous government led by Shehbaz Sharif pointing fingers at the PTI chief for being the source of the leak.
