Lawyers for Pakistan’s Convicted Imran Khan to Meet Him in Jail 

Lawyers, who support Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan, hold a protest against Khan's imprisonment, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 7, 2023. (AP)
Lawyers, who support Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan, hold a protest against Khan's imprisonment, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 7, 2023. (AP)
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Lawyers for Pakistan’s Convicted Imran Khan to Meet Him in Jail 

Lawyers, who support Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan, hold a protest against Khan's imprisonment, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 7, 2023. (AP)
Lawyers, who support Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan, hold a protest against Khan's imprisonment, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 7, 2023. (AP)

Lawyers for Pakistan's jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan will be allowed to meet him on Monday before they file an appeal against a graft conviction that has landed the former cricket star in jail, one of his lawyers said.

Khan, 70, has been at the heart of political turmoil since he was ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence last year, raising concern about stability in the nuclear-armed country as it grapples with an economic crisis.

Police took Khan from his home in the city of Lahore on Saturday and transferred him to a jail in Attock district, near the capital Islamabad, where a court convicted him of graft charges arising from the sale of state gifts.

The conviction, which Khan rejects as politically motivated, likely means he will be disqualified from running in a general election due by November.

"The jail authorities have given us a time to meet Imran Khan at 12:30 p.m. (0730 GMT). We've reached Attock jail," one of his lawyers, Naeem Panjhuta, said, adding that an appeal against the graft conviction would be filed after Khan completed paperwork.

Khan's legal team is also appealing to authorities to secure him better conditions in jail, Panjhuta told reporters in Islamabad earlier.

He said Khan had been classified as "C-class" prisoner although by rights he should be allocated an "A-class" cell.

Political prisoners are entitled to better facilities, including television, newspapers and books.

"As per our information, Khan has been kept in C-class," Panjhuta said.

A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for a comment.

Khan's arrest was the latest in a series of blows that have weakened his political standing after he fell out with the powerful military and his party splintered.

Ever since his ouster, Khan has been campaigning for a snap election and organizing protests, which led to significant violence on May 9, raising tension with the military.

Khan accuses the military and his political opponents of plotting against him to block him from the election. The military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half its history, denies that.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to call this week for the dissolution of parliament paving the way for a general election by November.

The political crisis has played out alongside an economic one.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund's board approved a $3 billion bailout for Pakistan to help it tackle an acute balance of payments crisis and dire shortage of central bank reserves.



US Freezes almost all Aid Except for Israel, Egypt Arms

Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File
Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File
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US Freezes almost all Aid Except for Israel, Egypt Arms

Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File
Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File

The United States, the world's biggest donor, froze virtually all foreign aid on Friday, making exceptions only for emergency food, and military funding for Israel and Egypt.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent an internal memo days after President Donald Trump took office vowing an "America First" policy of tightly restricting assistance overseas.

"No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved," said the memo to staff seen by AFP.

The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid -- including to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump's predecessor Joe Biden as it tries to repel a Russian invasion.

The directive also means a pause of at least several months of US funding for PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that buys anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease in developing countries, largely in Africa.

Launched under president George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR is credited with saving some 26 million lives and until recently enjoyed broad popular support along partisan lines in Washington.

But the memo explicitly made exceptions for military assistance to Israel -- whose longstanding major arms packages from the United States have expanded further since the Gaza war -- and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Rubio also made an exception for US contributions to emergency food assistance, which the United States has been contributing following crises around the world including in Sudan and Syria.

Lawmakers from the rival Democratic Party said that more than 20 million people relied on medication through PEPFAR and 63 million people on US-funded anti-malaria efforts including nets.

"For years, Republicans in Congress have decried what they see as a lack of US credibility vis-a-vis countries like China, Russia, and Iran," said Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Lois Frankel.

"Now our credibility is on the line, and it appears we will cut and run from American commitments to our partners around the world," they wrote in a letter.

Washington has long leveraged aid as a tool of its foreign policy, saying it cares about development and drawing a contrast with China, which is primarily concerned about seeking natural resources.

Meeks and Frankel also noted that foreign assistance is appropriated by Congress and said they would seek its implementation.

'Life or death consequences'
The memo allows the State Department to make other case-by-case exceptions and temporarily to fund salaries to staff and other administrative expenses.

The memo called for an internal review of all foreign assistance within 85 days.

In justifying the freeze, Rubio -- who as a senator was a supporter of development assistance -- wrote that it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments "are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump's foreign policy."

The United States has long been the world's top donor in dollar terms, although a number of European nations, especially in Scandinavia, give significantly more as a percent of their economies.

The United States gave more than $64 billion in overseas development assistance in 2023, the last year for which records were available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises industrialized countries.

Trump had already on taking office Monday signed an executive order suspending foreign assistance for 90 days, but it was not immediately clear how it would be implemented.

Anti-poverty group Oxfam said that Trump was abandoning a longstanding consensus in the United States for foreign assistance.

"Humanitarian and development assistance accounts for only around one percent of the federal budget; it saves lives, fights diseases, educates millions of children and reduces poverty," Oxfam America president Abby Maxman said in a statement.

"Suspending and ultimately cutting many of these programs could have life or death consequences for countless children and families who are living through crisis," she said.