Sawt Falasteen - Pakistan's Imran Khan defiant even as longer sentence looms

The former prime minister, long a source of frustration for the powerful military, has been in custody since August 2023 and faces a slew of legal cases he says are politically motivated.

A looming verdict for graft linked to a welfare foundation he set up with his wife, the Al-Qadir Trust, is the longest-running of those cases, with a verdict postponed on Monday for a third time.

"The Al-Qadir Trust case, like previous cases, is being dragged on only to pressure me," Khan said this month in one of his frequent statements railing against authorities and posted on social media by his team.

"But I demand its immediate resolution."

Analysts say the military establishment is using the sentence as a bargaining chip with Khan, whose popularity undermines a shaky coalition government that kept his party from power in elections last year.

"The establishment's deal is he comes out and stays quiet, stays decent, until the next election," said Ayesha Siddiqa, a London-based author and analyst on Pakistan's military.

- 'Politically motivated' -

Analysts say the military are Pakistan's kingmakers, although the generals deny interfering in politics.

Khan said he had once been offered a three-year exile abroad and was also "indirectly approached" recently about the possibility of house arrest at his sprawling home on the outskirts of the capital.

"We can assume from the delays that this is a politically motivated judgement. It is a Damocles sword over him," Khan's legal adviser Faisal Fareed Chaudhry told AFP.

"The case has lost its credibility," he said, adding that Khan will not accept any deal to stay silent.

Khan has been convicted and sentenced four times in other cases Two cases have been overturned by the Supreme Court, while judges have suspended the sentences from the other two.

The specialist anti-graft "accountability court" is set to announce the verdict and sentence in the welfare foundation case on Friday, two days after government envoys are scheduled to meet leaders from Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to ease tensions.

The PTI has previously sworn to refuse talks with a government its leaders claim is illegitimate, alleging the coalition seized power by rigging February 2024 polls.

They say they will only take part if political prisoners are released and an independent inquiry is launched into allegations of a heavy-handed response by authorities to PTI protests.

Otherwise, Khan has threatened to pull his party from the negotiations and continue with a campaign of civil disobedience that has frequently brought Islamabad to a standstill.

The most recent protests flared around November 26, when the PTI allege at least 10 of their activists were shot dead. The government says five security force members were killed in the chaos.

"The government would like to appear legitimate, and for that they need PTI to sit down in talks with them," said Asma Faiz, associate professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences.

"Ideally, they would be looking to offer some relief to Imran Khan and his party to appease the domestic and international criticism," she told AFP.

- 'PTI won't budge' -

For now, it appears to be a stalemate, said Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute director at The Wilson Center in Washington.

"The army might be willing to give Khan a deal that gets him out of jail, but Khan wouldn't accept the likely conditions of his freedom," he told AFP.

"Another problem is I can't imagine the government agreeing to an investigation of November 26. But PTI won't budge on that demand."

A stint in exile is common in the trajectory of political leaders in Pakistan who fall out of favour with the military and find themselves before the courts, only to return to power later.

Three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif served only a fraction of a sentence for corruption, spending several years in London before returning to Pakistan in late 2023.

Former and current president Asif Ali Zardari moved to Dubai after his party was rebuked by the generals.

Both men are now considered the chief architects of the ruling coalition.

But exile might not fit with the carefully worked image of Khan, whose political rise was based on the promise of replacing decades of entrenched dynastic politics.

"I will live and die in Pakistan," Khan said in a statement shared by his lawyers. "I will fight for my country's freedom until my last breath, and I expect my nation to do the same."

V.Said--SF-PST