A Pakistan court on Tuesday, August 29, suspended former prime minister Imran Khan's prison sentence for a graft conviction, his lawyer and a party official said, but it was unclear when he would be released.
A spokesman for Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party said the Islamabad High Court had overturned a lower court's decision to imprison him for three years, a verdict that barred him from contesting upcoming elections.
His party and lawyers said he was granted bail, but they feared the 70-year-old would be rearrested over one of the more than 200 cases leveled against him since he was ousted by a parliamentary vote in April last year.
Earlier this month, Pakistan's parliament was dissolved at the request of Khan's successor, Shehbaz Sharif, to pave the way for a caretaker government which will usher in elections in the coming weeks. No date for the polls has yet been announced.
"We have filed a separate application requesting the court pass an order barring the authorities from arresting him in any other case," Gohar Khan, one of Khan's lawyers, told Agence France-Presse. "If authorities arrest him in any other case, it will be against his legal rights."
Khan has been in prison for three weeks since a judge found him guilty of failing to properly declare gifts he received when in office.
Anticipating his release, Khan's legal team said they would head for Attock Jail, a century-old prison around 60 kilometers west of Islamabad.
The charismatic 70-year-old is Pakistan's most popular politician and claims the powerful military establishment orchestrated his ousting and subsequent legal cases to deny him a second term.