Imran Khan set to be charged with insulting Pakistan election officials

Pakistan’s election oversight body is set to indict the country’s former prime minister Imran Khan next week on charges of publicly insulting its officials.

Mr Khan appeared before a special tribunal of the Election Commission of Pakistan along with his lawyers amid tight security in the capital, Islamabad.

After a brief hearing, Shoaib Shaheen, one of Mr Khan’s lawyers, said the tribunal decided to charge the former premier with contempt on August 2.

The former cricketer is accused of calling the head of the electoral body, Sikandar Sultan Rajaa, and several of its officials “personal servants” to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at several gatherings.

Mr Sharif replaced Mr Khan in April 2022 after he was ousted from power in a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Mr Khan has been avoiding appearances before the tribunal for several months, saying the electoral body does not have the authority to charge him with contempt.

On Monday, the election oversight body ordered Mr Khan’s arrest after he repeatedly failed to show up before its tribunal to face contempt charges over his public outbursts against election commission officials.

Mr Khan was not arrested and showed up of his own volition on Tuesday before the tribunal.

Since he was ousted, Mr Khan has been faced with more than 150 legal cases, including several charges of corruption, “terrorism” and inciting people to violence over deadly protests in May that saw his followers attack government and military property across the country.

Violence erupted across Pakistan in May when police arrested Mr Khan in a corruption case from a courtroom in Islamabad. Mr Khan, a cricket star turned Islamist politician, still has a huge grassroots following in Pakistan.

The days of rioting by his followers subsided only after Mr Khan was released on an order from the Supreme Court.

Since then, several other courts have also given Mr Khan protection from arrest in multiple cases.

Mr Khan also appeared before the country’s Federal Investigation Agency on Tuesday to face charges of exposing a secret document.

Last week, Mr Sharif’s government said it would charge Mr Khan for “exposing an official secret document” last year when he waved a confidential diplomatic letter at a rally, describing it as “proof” that he was threatened and claiming his ousting was a conspiracy.

The document, dubbed Cipher, has not been made public but was apparently a diplomatic correspondence between a Pakistani ambassador to Washington and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.

Mr Khan claims his ousting was part of a US plot, a claim which has been denied by Mr Sharif and Washington.