A Pakistani court on Thursday sentenced 108 members of former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to prison for participating in riots after Khan was arrested in 2023.
Two of the defendants are leaders of PTI and sitting members of Pakistan’s legislature, Omar Ayub Khan and Shibli Faraz.
“For the first time in Pakistan’s judicial history, such a sad and shameful incident occurred that the leaders of the opposition in both houses were punished solely on the basis that they were loyal allies of Imran Khan’s political narrative, public representation, and constitutional struggle,” PTI said on social media when the sentences for Khan and Faraz were announced.
“Convicting opposition leaders one after another is not a good omen for any democratic system, and it will seriously damage our already fragile democracy,” warned Imran Khan’s media adviser, Zulfi Bukhari.
According to PTI, 14 of its sitting lawmakers have been sentenced in mass convictions this month. Six of them have been required to give up their seats under Pakistani law so far, and the others will most likely be stripped of their seats as well.
At least ten people were killed in the 2023 riots, when thousands of members of Khan’s extremely popular PTI party ran amok following his arrest on corruption charges. The rioters enraged Pakistan’s powerful military, which had been quarreling strenuously with Khan, by damaging military property. A massive crackdown on PTI followed.
Khan has been in jail ever since, awaiting trial on dozens of charges, while many other cases against him have been dropped. He was most recently sentenced to another 14 years in prison in January 2025. One of the charges still pending against him is inciting the 2023 riots.
Khan and his followers say all of the charges were fabricated for political reasons. They also believe Khan was ousted as prime minister in April 2022 in a coup orchestrated by the Pakistani military and foreign powers, including the United States.
Fifty-eight of the PTI defendants sentenced on Thursday were given prison sentences of ten years, while the rest received sentences of one to three years.
“The prosecution has proved its case against the accused without a shadow of doubt,” the anti-terrorism court insisted when handing the sentences down.
PTI is planning to launch a nationwide protest on August 5. PTI Secretary-General Salman Akram Raja said the protests would be a “historic movement” against the politically-motivated prosecution of party members, including Imran Khan.
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