Elections: Pakistan’s Imran Khan will face fresh charges of contempt in August, his lawyer says

Khan appeared before a special court of the Election Commission of Pakistan with his lawyer amid tight security in the capital, Islamabad.
After a brief hearing, Shoaib Shaheen, one of Khan’s lawyers, said the court decided to charge the former prime minister with contempt on August 2.

Khan was accused of summoning the head of the Electoral College, Iskandar Sultan Raja, and a number of its officials as “personal servants” of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif at several gatherings. Sharif replaced Khan in April 2022 after he was removed from power in a vote of no confidence in Parliament.
Khan had been avoiding court appearances for several months, saying the Electoral College did not have the authority to charge him with contempt.
On Monday, the election oversight body ordered Khan’s arrest after he repeatedly failed to appear in court to face contempt charges over his public outbursts against Election Commission officials.
Khan was not arrested and appeared in court on Tuesday of his own free will.
Since his ouster, Khan has been embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including many on charges of corruption, “terrorism” and inciting people to violence over deadly protests in May that saw his followers attack government and military property across the country.
Violence erupted across Pakistan in May when police arrested Khan in a corruption case from a courtroom in Islamabad. Khan, a cricket star turned Islamist politician, still has a huge fan base in Pakistan. The days of rioting by his followers were not subsided until after Khan was released by order of the Supreme Court.
Since then, several other courts have granted Khan protection from arrest in multiple cases.
Khan also appeared before the country’s Federal Investigation Agency on Tuesday to face charges of revealing a classified document. Last week, Sharif’s government said it would press charges against Khan for “revealing a secret official document” last year when he waved a secret diplomatic message at a rally, calling it “evidence” that he was threatened and claiming his ouster was a plot.
The document, dubbed Cipher, has not been made public, but it was apparently diplomatic correspondence between a Pakistani ambassador in Washington and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.
Khan claims his ouster was part of a US plot, a claim that Sharif and Washington have denied.