What is the cipher case, in which former Pak PM Imran Khan has been sentenced to 10 years in jail?

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and ex-Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday (January 30) were sentenced to 10 years in jail by a special court in the cipher case that pertains to the disclosure of a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington in early 2022. Both Imran and Shah Mahmood have been found guilty of making the document public.

Although Imran has claimed that the cable is proof of a US conspiracy to push the Pakistani military to oust him in a parliamentary vote in 2022, he has denied revealing its content publicly — the former PM has said news outlets got the document from other sources. What is the cipher case? What did the document contain? We take a look.

What was the classified cable?

The document at the centre of the controversy contained an account of a meeting that took place on March 7, 2022, between US State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and then Pakistani ambassador to US Asad Majeed Khan.

The complete text of the purported cable hasn’t been disclosed yet as it is protected under Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 of Pakistan. However, in August 2023, American news organisation The Intercept reproduced a section of the document — the outlet said that it received the document from a source in Pakistan’s military.

In the meeting, the US officials expressed their displeasure regarding Imran’s neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine — the then PM was in Moscow on February 24, 2022, when President Valmadir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine, according to The Intercept report.

Lu went on to say: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister”. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

Asad Majeed sent the details of the gathering to Islamabad through a cable, labelled “Secret”. Notably, just a day after the meeting, on March 8, Imran’s political rivals in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote. More than a month later, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief was ousted from office after the vote succeeded.

The US State Department on multiple occasions has denied that its officials encouraged their Pakistani counterparts to oust Imran.

What is the cipher case?

Imran talked about the secret document for the first time on March 27, 2022, at a huge gathering in Islamabad, where he pulled out a ‘letter’ from his pocket, claiming it to be proof of an international conspiracy to remove him from the top job. Ten days later, he revealed more details about the cable and said, “The US had sent a threatening message through Pakistan’s envoy,” according to a report by Dawn.

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Since then, especially after his ouster, Imran has repeatedly brought up the classified cable and its content to claim that the US was behind the no-confidence vote against him. In response, in July 2023, the Pakistan Muslim League (N)-led government accused the former PM of “exposing an official secret document”. The then Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told reporters in Islamabad that Imran’s abuse of an official secret document had harmed Pakistan’s foreign relations.

The next month, just days after The Intercept published its report, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered an FIR against Imran under Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 for making the contents of the classified cable public. Offences under Section 5, if proved in a court of law, involve punishment of imprisonment from two to 14 years, and in some cases even a death sentence, a report by Geo News said.

In August 2023, Imran was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in the Toshakhana graft case. While that sentence was later suspended, he has remained behind bars due to other cases. He is also barred from running in the upcoming elections in February 2024.

This is an updated of an explainer first published in October 2023.

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