<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>A court in Pakistan has suspended former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s jail sentence in a case related to illegal selling of state gifts.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were each handed a 14-year sentence in the case on January 31 – just a week ahead of the February 8 elections, which Khan’s party alleges were rigged.</div><div><br></div><div>The Islamabad High Court on Monday said the couple’s sentence will remain suspended until a decision is taken on the case after the Eid holidays, which begin in 10 days.</div><div><br></div><div>Khan, 71, is accused of not disclosing assets based on the sale of state gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($504,000) he received when he was the prime minister from 2018 to April 2022.</div><div><br></div><div>The case was brought by Pakistan’s anticorruption agency, which accused Khan and his wife of unlawfully buying and selling the gifts.</div><div><br></div><div>The sentencing had made the couple ineligible to contest for public office for 10 years while also slapping a fine of 787 million rupees ($2.8m) on each of them.</div><div><br></div><div>Khan, founder of the main opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, has been in prison since August last year on several charges.</div><div><br></div><div>The conviction in the state gifts case came a day after the cricket star-turned-politician was handed a 10-year prison term for revealing state secrets.</div><div><br></div><div>Khan and his wife were also convicted for seven years when a court on February 3 ruled that their 2018 marriage violated Islamic law.</div><div><br></div><div>PTI politician Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, a close aide of Khan, told Al Jazeera he was confident of a favourable outcome given the way the state gifts case was progressing in the court.</div><div><br></div><div>“I have said this since the conviction that the cases against Khan and his wife do not have the legs to stand on and it was only a matter of time before they would get thrown out,” he told Al Jazeera.</div><div><br></div><div>“We welcome this decision and hopefully this will be the outcome in all other cases against Khan and his wife as they are all frivolous in nature.” - Al Jazeera&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>