KARACHI: Legal experts are divided on the Al-Qadir verdict, some arguing it lacks evidentiary support and may be overturned on appeal, and others describing it as robust and well-reasoned. The case is now expected to move to the Islamabad High Court, where its legal and procedural merits will face further scrutiny.
After three delays, an accountability court on Friday convicted Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, in the £190 million Al-Qadir case, sentencing Imran to 14 years and Bushra to seven years and imposing fines of Rs1 million and Rs0.5 million, respectively. Failure to pay the fines will extend their sentences by six and three months. The Al-Qadir Trust case involves allegations that, in 2019, Imran Khan and others misappropriated Rs50 billion (£190 million) sent by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to the Pakistani government. The amount pertained to assets seized from a property tycoon during the PTI’s tenure.
While Information Minister Ataullah Tarar called it an “open-and-shut case” and Imran’s lawyer Barrister Salman Safdar called it a case of political vengeance, The News reached out to legal minds for their thoughts on the Al-Qadir verdict.
Supreme Court advocate Basil Nabi Malik tells The News that the Al-Qadir Trust case “amongst the many that Imran Khan has been implicated in, perhaps carried the most weight”. That said, Malik says, “the strong perception of vindictiveness, and that of the victimisation and suppression of a political party and leader, will remain the dominant discussion points when debating this judgment”.
So what happens next? Lawyer Jahanzeb Sukhera explains that the case will now “find its way to the Islamabad High Court”. Recalling that previous cases involving Imran had been set aside in appeal at the IHC, Sukhera says “it will not be surprising if the Al Qadir case also meets a similar end”
Lawyer Abuzar Salman Khan Niazi -- who has been part of Imran Khan’s legal team on various occasions -- agrees on the next steps and says he is hopeful the verdict “will be set aside” by the high court.
On the merits of the case, Sukhera offers that per his thinking “the conclusion reached by the trial court is not supported by the evidence or the law. It is also based on presumptions, which are fatal to judgments in criminal matters”. Explaining further, he says, “The primary objection that the court was required to attend to, and which really should have led to the acquittal of all the accused, was that the NAB Ordinance, 1999 was amended in 2022, after the VONC, by the PDM-controlled parliament, whereby decisions made by the federal government were excluded from the ambit of the NAB law. In the Al-Qadir case, the supposed ‘abuse of power’ was the federal government’s decision to allow the £190 million received from its settlement. Without going into the propriety of this decision, one can still see that this is a decision of the federal government; therefore, because of the 2022 amendment, this case could not have been heard and decided by the accountability court under the NAB law”.
Supreme Court advocate Hafiz Ahsaan Khokhar says that the facts of the case show that there were “serious legal violations and misrepresentations made by the accused to the cabinet, NCA, and even with the Supreme Court”. However, he adds that Imran and Bushra Bibi have a legal right under section 32 of the NAB Ordinance “to challenge the sentence of the accountability court before the Division Bench of the Islamabad High Court within 30 days”.
This is not the opinion of Abuzar Niazi though, who points out that Imran Khan “only serves as a trustee of Al-Qadir University. and no part of the university’s land is registered in his name -- making this case entirely baseless”.
Not only that, Niazi also refers to one part of the Friday judgment -- specifically: “There might be certain minor discrepancies and contradictions in the prosecution evidence which are but natural in such like cases of white collar crimes. Despite availing convenient and flexible opportunities, the defence failed to create any reasonable dent or doubt fatal for the prosecution case” -- and says that even just this one ground alone “is adequate to set aside the conviction”.
Speaking of the prosecution’s case, Sukhera says that “to obtain a conviction for ‘abuse of power’, the prosecution is required to prove that the accused made personal gain”. He says that in the current case, the accused are trustees of this trust “and not its beneficiaries” and “the terms of the relevant trust deed expressly state that the trustees have no power to obtain the trust assets for themselves”. Sukhera concludes that the accountability court’s finding that the donation made to Al Qadir Trust is a gain made by the former PM and his wife” is legally untenable”. He also points out that the court’s assumption that Farhat Shehzadi was the former PM’s frontperson was made without there being any evidence establishing her to be so, adding: “I do not expect the appellate court to look favourably on this finding either”.
Former NAB Special Prosecutor Imran Shafique spoke with Geo’s Shahzeb Khanzada on Friday night and said that after a very long time, a verdict by an accountability court comes across as robust. Speaking to the merits of the verdict, Shafique said that the prosecution of the case was better and that the judge also replied to every point raised by the defence. Shafique also said that in his opinion as far as the case against Imran Khan goes it is strong, but the verdict handed to Bushra Bibi does not seem sound to him and may not sustain.
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