May 9 Verdict on PTI Leaders

• An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore delivered its verdict on 20 June 2026, read out inside Kot Lakhpat Jail.
• It acquitted Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the party's vice chairman and a former foreign minister, along with eleven workers, citing insufficient evidence.
• It sentenced four senior leaders to ten years each: Dr Yasmin Rashid (former Punjab health minister), Omar Sarfraz Cheema (former Punjab governor), Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed and Ejaz Chaudhry.
• The court found that the four planned and incited the riots. The case is the arson of police vehicles in Mughalpura, built on 37 witnesses (22 accused, judgment on 15, two declared absconders). The written judgment, the exact charges and any fines have not been made public.
• This is one of more than a hundred May 9 cases. The same four have been convicted before, including a December 2025 case under the same judge that also gave them ten years and also acquitted Qureshi. The high-profile attacks on military sites like Jinnah House and GHQ are separate cases.
• Beyond the anti-terrorism courts, about 105 civilians were convicted separately by military courts for May 9, a parallel track the Supreme Court allowed in 2025.

Everyone agrees on what the court did. The fight is over what it means: accountability for an attack on the army, or one party punished and called law. The government and most newsrooms read it the first way; the party and its supporters read it the second. What both sides skip is the politics underneath. This is one chapter in the confrontation between PTI and the military that began with Imran Khan's arrest in 2023. Treated as ordinary crime and punishment, the verdict loses the context that makes both the charges and the anger make sense.