By Staff Reporter
RAWALPINDI: An anti-terrorism court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi sentenced 47 leaders and supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party to a decade in prison each on Saturday, convicting them in absentia of orchestrating and participating in violent attacks on the army’s General Headquarters and other military sites during nationwide riots in May 2023.
District and Sessions Judge Amjad Ali Shah, presiding over Anti-Terrorism Court No. 1, issued a 16-page detailed verdict that found the accused guilty of planning and carrying out arson, vandalism and assaults on security forces. The court imposed an additional fine of Rs500,000 on each defendant and ordered the confiscation of their property in favor of the state.
Among those convicted were several high-profile figures in Khan’s party, including former federal minister Hammad Azhar, opposition leader Omar Ayub Khan, lawmaker Zartaj Gul, Senator Shibli Faraz, ex-minister Murad Saeed, presidential spokesman Shahbaz Gill, businessman Zulfi Bukhari, and former members of the National Assembly Kanwal Shauzab, Rai Hassan Nawaz, Muhammad Ahmed Chattha and Sheikh Rashid Shafique.
The list also included Rai Muhammad Murtaza Iqbal, Shaukat Ali Bhatti, Usman Saeed Basra, Ijaz Khan Jazi, Malik Abid Hussain, Zahid Abbas Choudhary, Faisal Mukhtar and Muzamil Masood Bhatti, along with others identified only by name in the judgment.
The case stems from the chaos that erupted on May 9, 2023, immediately after Khan was arrested from the Islamabad High Court premises in a separate graft case involving the Al-Qadir Trust. Thousands of PTI supporters stormed public buildings and military installations across Pakistan that day, including the Corps Commander’s residence in Lahore and, in Rawalpindi, Gate No. 1 of the GHQ, Hamza Camp, the Army Museum and the Sixth Road Metro Station. Protesters set fires, hurled stones and petrol bombs, and damaged government property in what authorities described as a coordinated assault on the state.
The verdict marked the latest chapter in a sweeping crackdown on the PTI that began after the riots. Dozens of terrorism-related cases were filed against party leaders and workers, many of whom have since been disqualified from holding public office after convictions in parallel May 9 prosecutions. Several of those sentenced Saturday — including Ayub, Faraz, Gul, Nawaz and Chattha — already face such disqualifications.
The Rawalpindi case originally named 118 defendants, including Khan himself and senior PTI leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Khan was formally charged in the matter on Dec. 5, 2024, and has been in custody since August 2023. Statements from 44 prosecution witnesses were recorded during the proceedings. But 47 of the accused were tried separately as proclaimed offenders after they failed to appear. Eighteen had attended earlier hearings at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Central Jail and in open court — where witnesses displayed recovered weapons, petrol bombs and fragments of a damaged army sculpture — only to vanish once the final witnesses remained. The other 29 never showed up at all after the case was registered at the RA Bazar police station.
Judge Shah ruled that their prolonged, unexplained absence amounted to an inference of guilt, citing both Pakistani law and international precedents from the US Supreme Court, Britain’s Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the European Court of Human Rights. Under Section 21-L of the Anti-Terrorism Act, the court appointed a state defence counsel, Chaudhry Muhammad Masood Amin, who cross-examined 19 witnesses. A proclamation ordering the accused to surrender was published in the newspaper Nawa-i-Waqt on Jan. 8 after a judicial inquiry declared them willful absconders; none complied.
The judgment directed that conviction warrants be sent to Central Jail and the local police station house officer, with instructions to jail the defendants immediately upon arrest. Perpetual non-bailable warrants were also issued. The court noted that any of the 47 who surrender within two months — or later with good cause — would be entitled to a full retrial on the merits under Section 19(12) of the law.
The PTI reacted sharply, calling the sentences “not only contrary to the basic principles of justice” but “yet another sad example of vengeful actions in Pakistan’s political history.” In a statement, the party noted that many convictions were handed down in absentia and argued that the proceedings reinforced the perception that the justice system was being wielded for political ends. “These decisions can neither suppress the voice of the people nor stop the party’s democratic struggle,” the PTI said. It pledged to pursue all constitutional and legal remedies and demanded an end to what it described as “political vendetta,” the immediate release of political prisoners and the establishment of “true supremacy of the Constitution and the law.”
The party further contended that Khan’s prolonged imprisonment and the entanglement of its central leadership in multiple cases — of which the GHQ attack prosecution was merely the latest link — formed part of a broader pattern of “political engineering” against the movement that ousted Khan through a no-confidence vote in 2022, the only such removal of a prime minister in Pakistan’s history.
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