ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday granted bail to former prime minister Imran Khan and ordered his release in a case involving gifts acquired from a state repository, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said. 

The reference, popularly called the new Toshakhana case, was filed in July and involves a jewelry set worth over €380,000 gifted to the former first lady by a foreign dignitary when Khan was prime minister from 2018-2022. The couple is accused of undervaluing the gift and buying it at a lesser price from the state repository.

Khan’s wife, who was also under arrest in the case, got bail from the IHC last month. 

Before the new case was filed, the ex-premier, who has been in jail since last August, was convicted in four cases. Two of the cases have since been suspended, including an original one relating to state gifts, while he was acquitted in the remaining two.

“Former prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, currently jailed, has been granted bail in the Toshakhana 2 case,” the PTI said in a message shared with media. “Islamabad High Court has ordered his release.”

“This was the last government’s case [against Khan], all previous prosecutions have lost steam and collapsed,” Khan’s lawyer Salman Safdar told reporters outside the court after the IHC delivered its verdict.

However, it is unlikely that Khan will be released after the IHC order as he is also under arrest in a number of cases related to riots in May 2023 in which his alleged supporters ransacked government and military buildings after Khan’s brief arrest in a separate case. 

Khan’s convictions earlier this year prevented him from contesting the Feb. 8 election. The former prime minister and his party alleges the cases are politically motivated cases and a ploy by the caretaker government, Pakistan’s electoral watchdog, the powerful military and his political rivals, led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, to keep Khan and his party away from elections. All three deny the allegations. 

Khan, who was ousted from office after a parliamentary vote in April 2022, has since waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the country’s powerful military, which is thought to be aligned with the government.

He continues to remain popular among the masses, especially the youth, with his party’s rallies drawing thousands of people. Khan’s party has held several rallies over the past few months to build public pressure to secure his release from prison.

The PTI has announced it will hold an anti-government “long march” to Pakistan’s capital on Nov. 24 to demand Khan’s release from prison, the release of the party’s jailed leaders and supporters, and independence of the judiciary, which it says was compromised after the government recently passed the 26th amendment. 

The government says the recent amendments related to the judiciary are meant to smooth out its functioning and tackle a backlog of cases. 
 

KARACHI: The Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), the country’s top representative body for the IT sector, has warned this week Internet slowdowns and the restriction of virtual private network (VPN) services could lead to financial losses and closures and increase operational costs for the industry by up to $150 million annually. 

Pakistan’s IT sector has been thriving in recent years, with exports clocking in at $3.2 billion in FY24. 

Internet speeds in Pakistan have dropped by up to 30-40 percent over the past few months, according to the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (WISPAP) as the federal government moves to implement a nationwide firewall to block malicious content, protect government networks from attacks, and allow the government to identify IP addresses associated with what it calls “anti-state propaganda” and terror attacks. Authorities have also announced a ban on the use of VPNs in the country.

Pakistan has already blocked access to social media platform X since the February general elections, with the government saying the blocking was to stop anti-state activities and due to a failure by X to adhere to local Pakistani laws. 

Rights activists say all these moves are designed to stifle critical voices and democratic accountability in the country, which the government denies. 

“Internet slowdown and blocking of virtual private network (VPN) services will certainly translate into an existential threat as it will result in unrecoverable financial loss, service disruptions, and reputational loss in the export of IT and IT-enabled Services (ITeS),” P@SHA Chairman Sajjad Mustafa Syed said in a statement released on Tuesday, putting “cautious estimates” of the increase in operational costs of the IT industry from VPN blockages at between $100-150 million each year.

In August, the Pakistan Business Council (PBC) warned that frequent Internet disruptions and low speeds caused by poor implementation of the national firewall had led many multinational companies to consider relocating their offices out of Pakistan, with some having “already done so.” P@SHA also said that month Pakistan’s economy could lose up to $300 million a year due to Internet disruptions caused by the imposition of the firewall.

“Even by conservative estimates the IT industry will suffer losses in tens of millions of dollars in the short term; and the reputational and intangible loses will be huge and devastating for the industry in the longer run, especially with the global competitive landscape evolving in this space,” Syed said. 

He said the Internet slowdown and VPN blocks would deal a “huge blow” to one of the fastest-growing industries of Pakistan and create a “domino effect” on other sectors of the economy.

“Domestic and international IT companies will be forced to close or significantly restrict their operations in Pakistan – and it will be detrimental to the most flourishing industry of Pakistan vis-à-vis exports, skills development and employment generation,” Syed added.

“In addition to this, it will be extremely demoralizing and discouraging for our IT companies, their workforce, start-up entrepreneurs, freelancers, and everyone involved in the sector – who are working very hard to bring Pakistan at the forefront of global technology destinations.”

Pakistan’s IT and ITeS exports have been growing at an average of 30 percent per year, and are on the way to achieve over $15 billion in the next 5 years, according to industry data, provided the government ensures continuity in export, fiscal, financial, SME, infrastructure and IT policies.

“If the VPNs are blocked, most of IT companies, Call Centers, BPO [business process outsourcing] organizations of Pakistan will lose all the major Fortune 500 clients, as well as others – as data protection and cybersecurity are of paramount importance to our clients, and connecting to client systems through VPN is a global norm and standard, and is a basic requirement and expectation of clients around the world,” Syed said. 

“Additionally, no international company of any size tolerates any intrusion into their security protocols by any private or public institution.”

He said the estimated financial losses from the moves did not include the inevitable loss of livelihoods of remote workers and freelancers, urging authorities to engage with P@SHA, industry leaders, and relevant stakeholders to develop a “balanced and secure framework” that safeguarded national security without compromising the operational needs of the IT and other economic sectors of Pakistan.