Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife have had their convictions overturned – only to be arrested again on different charges.
The former international cricket star and wife Bushra Bibi were sentenced to seven years in prison due to concerns about the legality of their marriage.
The court ruling on Saturday saw Khan’s followers gathering near the prison in Rawalpindi, waiting to greet him on his release.
However those hopes were dashed when the 71-year-old was arrested again in connection with riots last year, his party said.
The party also said it believed Bushra Bibi, was also being arrested again in a lingering corruption case.
Pakistani authorities have registered multiple cases against Khan since 2022 – when he was ousted from power through a vote of no-confidence in the parliament after serving as the country’s Prime Minister since August 2018.
Since his initial arrest in May 2023, he has been involved in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting violence.
Following Khan’s first arrest, his supporters attacked government and military in some areas of the country as well as setting fire to a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan.
The violence subsided only when Khan was released by the supreme court. However, he was again arrested in early August 2023 after a court handed him a three-year jail sentence for corruption.
In recent months, Khan has been acquitted in several cases relating to last year’s violence, but his bail was cancelled this week in connection with one such case that was pending against him in the eastern city of Lahore.
Khan’s party said it plans to approach higher courts to get bail for him.
Saturday’s acquittal relates to Khan’s marriage to Bibi, his third wife.
She was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Khan – with Islamic law in Pakistan requiring a three-month waiting period between marriages and Bibi claiming they had in fact divorced in August that year.
Earlier this month, the United Nations human rights working group called for Khan’s immediate release, saying he had been detained “arbitrarily in violation of international laws”.
On Friday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party was improperly denied at least 20 seats in parliament, in a significant blow to the country’s fragile governing coalition.
Khan’s Pakistan party was previously excluded from a system that gives parties extra seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly, or lower house of the parliament.
Though the verdict was a major political win for Khan, it would not put his party in a position to oust the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came into power following a February 8 election that Khan’s allies say was rigged.