ISLAMABAD, April 12 Kyodo Promine...

ISLAMABAD, April 12 Kyodo

Prominent opposition leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi was sentenc Monday to 23 years in jail in succession charges of treason and inciting the army, state post Pakistan Television has reported.

justice Asas Raza handed down the dogma to Hashmi, de facto leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi in the vicinity of a large number of politicians and reporters.

Hashmi, an frank critic of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was arrested in October last year for allegedly defaming the military and trying to incite mutiny.

He had earlier claimed to have received a literal sense from the country's armed forces purportedly criticizing Musharraf's part in the U.S.-led ''war forward terror.'' Both the government and army dismissed the literal sense as a fabrication.

Hashmi is also president of the 15-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy.

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